The atmosphere is slightly less dense than Earth’s but richer in oxygen, which argues for a lot of plant life, if only phytoplankton. Nitrogen is the main inert element. There is a puzzling concentration of helium, over a thousand times the terran trace, but that shouldn’t have any effect on daily life, other than making balloon travel easy.

(Hotspot has a large active volcano, which could be a source of helium, though there’s no analog on Earth.)

Better pictures are going to be available almost hourly, but this seems like a good time to start.

It’s too soon to say much about climate or weather. Obviously there will be a great variety of conditions, since Mainland stretches from the Arctic Circle almost to the equator. Tides will be four times as high as on Earth, which of course will affect living conditions on the coasts and especially on small islands.

We’re tentatively planning to establish the first settlement near the large inland lake in the temperate zone, though robot drones and, selectively, survey teams will range all over Mainland and Tropica. The polar ice caps and the four other large islands will also be surveyed, but probably won’t be settled in the near future, unless they have some special virtues.

This map will be updated every day at noon.

AGE 56

DAY ZERO

Age 55.99 [8 King 429]—Coming into orbit. I opened up the window in my floor to watch Epsilon drift by every fifty seconds, twice a minute. Finally getting used to this time system. Dan says it’s like living a linear transformation, which I think is a highly emotional observation, for an engineer.

I perversely miss being head of Entertainment. They’re letting me help with the big party, but it’s a pale shadow of the satisfaction you get from orchestrating the whole thing. (I know I could look back through this diary and see how much I enjoyed it while it was happening. That’s the nature of the beast.) I’m in charge of the scaffolding crew. The same complicated system we’ve used since we left New New, now rather sagging and worn. Aren’t we all. Complicated systems.

I want to throw myself into work to stop thinking about Sandra. If anything happens to her, it’s my fault. I knew that she and Jakob wanted to be on the first shuttle, but when I put in the early-thaw request I was sure it wouldn’t be fulfilled. I just didn’t want her bitching at me for not having tried. So now while I’m bolting together bleachers, she’s studying maps and practicing pistol shooting. Pistols! What do they think they’re going to run into? Revolutionaries? Mobsters?