Fire Land

Fire Land

(This is a modification and re-rendering of an earlier image)

Pyre is a nasty world, a Super-Earth way too close to an energetic star, a world whose surface bakes under its sun and a runway greenhouse atmosphere. It makes pre-terraformed Venus look like an icehouse.

“But it’s also denser than iron and all sorts of heavy metals float around on its magma oceans. You can get rich there. Very rich.

“Centuries back, magma miners had a short lifespan, but ever since they invented the Stasis, it’s been pretty safe. If you screw up collecting from the refining towers, a stasis bubble will kick in before your Harvester hits the molten rock, and all you have to do is bob around in timeless safety until a Grav Town comes by and scoops you up. Of course the stasis switch is hard-set for thirty days and you can’t shut it off until the time’s up – a third of a nanosecond to those inside, but one Harvester payment to the banks on the outside.”

-Tuan “Jim” Alega-Roos, Memoirs from the Debtors Cell.