Beyond the Volcano

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“Its name is Hawking Mons, but to those who live in the domed-over crater it’s just the Volcano. I still find it hard to believe that one of the Galaxy’s natural wonders is known by such an ordinary name. Volcanoes aren’t uncommon, after all. Every sizable world has a few. But only Marjolin in the Epsilon Indi system has a Hawking Mons: an extinct shield volcano over 1,000 kilometers broad at its base; towering 56 kilometers high—so tall, it pokes through the blanket of acid clouds which shroud the planet’s surface, like an island emerging from a hot poison sea.

“Marjolin is an Earth-sized, rocky world orbiting too close to its stellar primary to be habitable. Atmospheric pressure at the bottom of its gravity well is equal to what you would find about a thousand meters beneath Earth’s oceans, and it’s hot enough down there to melt lead. But pressure and temperature decrease with altitude, and at the top of The Volcano it is a perfectly pleasant 23 degree Celsius, nice autumn weather back in Washington. It would have been nicer if the creative forces of the Universe had made it breathable too… but that would be expecting too much. It’s almost all carbon dioxide, and at that altitude, even Marjolin’s ultra-dense atmosphere has thinned to what you would find over Earth at say, 15 kilometers.

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