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dull and 10 percent beautiful. The accommodations on Venus weren’t scary either. She’d have her own room. On Station 9 it was six people to a sleeping pod. Iwo Donatsu was said to have private tents for every individual. The colossal balloon that held the mine afloat was filled with breathable air. Earth air on Venus was like helium on Earth. So she’d be living and working within the balloon, the first time in space she’d have some space. Not the least bit scary.
    The scary part was the airlock. It would contain a trace of Venusian weather. It would be purged of air, washed out with a blast of cleaning solution, and it would have a fast cycle of devoted oxygen to lessen the impact of the inevitable. But no matter what they installed, there would be a trace of Venus inside. A drop of rain always stuck to a panel or behind a screw somewhere, and rain on Venus is 700 Kelvin sulfuric acid. They wouldn’t send people through if it still posed any risk. Legally they had to reduce it to a healthy ppm, but those last millionths were said to be damn potent and prohibitively expensive to reduce any further. Orientation said it was like inhaling a bit of Tom Yum soup.
    She ran through the airlock and vowed never to try Tom Yum soup as long as she lived. The Iwo Donatsu lock closed and acquainted her with the balloon’s atmosphere. It smelled fresh and alive, and somewhat artificially minty. The walls were all deep blue or green, the light cool and soft. Nothing like Station 9’s nonstop brightness. Once inside, there was nothing to remind her she was on a hot orange planet, nothing to remind her she was in a mining complex. It was more like an undersea hotel, no doubt the merciful architect’s way of letting the workers forget that they were, in fact, on planet hell.
    There was one man in the lobby, dressed in shiny black rubber. He carried a microwave rifle on his back. He had no hair and no antenna, nor any discernible emotion. His voice was dead cold too.
    â€œDr. Mowat, you will follow me to your tent. I will carry your luggage.”
    â€œWhatever you say, boss,” she sighed. He picked up her bags, heavy bags, like they were nothing. The gravity wasn’t that different from Earth. She had just hauled the things in. She noticed the bumps around his sides. Powered armor or powered implants. His rubber garb was covered in too many pockets to tell which. She had to wonder if his extra punch was because he worked in the mine or something else. The man she was working for wasn’t affiliated with the mines. None of his crew were supposed to be either. When she asked what they were doing on Venus if not mining sulfur, they almost terminated her contract on the spot. So she wouldn’t ask here, and she wouldn’t ask the man what his powered arms were for. He led her to a tram, and they sat down. As soon as the tram started, she could see the open balloon.
    It looked bigger inside than out. A cavernous, foggy tunnel, half a kilometer high. The tram plodded along the very bottom, a long curved valley from which she could see the atmospheric refineries and storage bays. The refineries weren’t as large as the complex of ducts emerging from them. Every meter of the walls had some sort of duct on it. Even over the hum of the tram, she could hear the throbbing drone of the air systems keeping them afloat and alive. Past the refineries she could see the city. There were tents right off of the track and tents all the way up the walls, accessible by ladder and positioned to offer a flat floor on what lower tents called their sides. There were no people to be seen. Everyone was either at work or asleep. The tram stopped at the far end of the city.
    â€œYou will stay in tent 390. You will be the only resident of this tent. Other medical staff live in tents 384–389. The hospital tent is straight ahead.”
    A giant tent, but still a tent. Two floors of light green canvas unmoving in