 What is the Brightside?
Brightside Crossing by Alan E. Nourse JAMES BARON was not pleased to hear that he had had a visitor when he reached the Red Lion that evening. Street trade was discouraged at the Red Lion, gently but persuasively; the patrons were few in number. Across to the right was a group that Baron knew vaguely—Andean climbers, or at least two of them were. You’re the only man on Earth who’s attempted a Brightside Crossing and lived through it! No human beings will ever cross the Brightside alive, not if they try for centuries.” It was the planet that whipped us, that and the Sun . I’d been interested in the Brightside for almost as long as I can remember (Claney said). After that, I followed Sanderson’s work in the Twilight Lab up there and began to get Brightside into my blood, sure as death. I first met him on Venus; we spent five years together up there doing some of the nastiest exploring since the Matto Grasso. Then he made the attempt on Vulcan Crater that paved the way for Balmer a few years later. We spent an evening here at the Red Lion, talking about old times; he told me about the Vulcan business, and how he’d been out to see Sanderson and the Twilight Lab on Mercury, and how he preferred a hot trek to a cold one any day of the year—and then he wanted to know what I’d been doing since Venus and what my plans were.
 The Brightside is the side of Mercury that constantly faces the sun.
 The Brightside is the side of Mercury that constantly faces the sun.  The Brightside is the first passage to the core of Vulcan Crater on Venus.  The Brightside is the name of the passage on the Andean mountains of Venus.  The Brightside is the name of the crossing the climbers are going to climb.