 Who seems to be the least intelligent person?
He had no stomach for mysteries, vast or trifling, and there were pressing things to think about at this time. 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! I guess I was about ten when Wyatt and Carpenter made the last attempt—that was in 2082, I think. He was a major in the Interplanetary Service for some years and hung onto the title after he gave up his commission. 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. I’d always liked the Major—he was big and quiet and cool, the sort of guy who always had things figured a little further ahead than anyone else and always knew what to do in a tight place. Too many men in this game are all nerve and luck, with no judgment. He also had the kind of personality that could take a crew of wild men and make them work like a well-oiled machine across a thousand miles of Venus jungle. I want the Brightside without any nonsense about it.” “I want to make a Crossing at perihelion and I want to cross on the surface. That makes the Brightside of Mercury at perihelion the hottest place in the Solar System, with one single exception: the surface of the Sun itself. The Twilight Lab, near the northern pole of Mercury, was the obvious jumping-off place. Twilight Lab wasn’t particularly interested in the Brightside, of course—the Sun was Sanderson’s baby and he’d picked Mercury as the closest chunk of rock to the Sun that could hold his observatory. F. No permanent installation with a human crew could survive at either extreme. But with Mercury’s wobble, the twilight zone between Brightside and Darkside offers something closer to survival temperatures. Sanderson built the Lab up near the pole, where the zone is about five miles wide, so the temperature only varies 50 to 60 degrees with the libration. The Solar ’scope could take that much change and they’d get good clear observation of the Sun for about seventy out of the eighty-eight days it takes the planet to wheel around. The Major was counting on Sanderson knowing something about Mercury as well as the Sun when we camped at the Lab to make final preparations.
 McIvers
 Stone  McIvers  Sanderson  Mikuta