Description de l’éditeur
The closest planet to the Sun, Mercury is an airless, heat-scorched world where temperatures rise to four times higher than the boiling point of water. But this vision of hell is also a planet with unlimited solar power - worth a fortune to the space tycoon Saito Yamagata if he can find a way to harness it. He has hired the enigmatic Dante Alexios to establish a research station on the surface of the planet and find a way to turn that solar energy into portable power satellites. But Yamagata is secretly also preparing the way to a very different dream: he wants to travel to the stars themselves. And Alexios has his own obsession, a plot to lure an old enemy to this hellhole of a world and take his revenge for one of the worst disasters in human history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in the same future universe as the author's asteroid series (The Silent War, etc.) and sharing such major players as the Yamagata Corporation and the religion of the New Morality, Hugo-winner Bova's well-plotted fourth planet novel (after 2003's Saturn) features a classic love triangle, backed by the occasional Greek chorus of scientific explanations. While astrobiologist Victor Molina and engineer Mance Bracknell (disguised as Dante Alexios) vie for the affections of Victor's wife, Lara Tierney Molina, Saito Yamagata attempts to create an efficient, inexpensive staging area on Mercury to send ships into deep space. Meanwhile, Bracknell schemes to exact revenge for his destroyed past. Ten years earlier, Bracknell's efforts to create another efficient, inexpensive method of launching spaceships called "The Sky Tower" was sabotaged by Bishop Danvers of the New Morality, as well as by Molina and Yamagata's son, Nobu. Millions of innocents died as a result. The moral questions raised by Bracknell's complicated retribution scenarios about the rights of victims for revenge and the immoral consequences of moral acts add depth to an otherwise standard tale of space adventure.
