Life in The Twilight Belt
The inhabited regions of the Twilight Belt are not a single area, but a honeycomb of valleys, some containing hot springs, each separated from the others by sheer volcanic cliffs, taller than Earth's Mount Everest. As the atmosphere of Mercury is extremely shallow, communication between the valleys can only occur by those possessing a breathing apparatus, as the mountain peaks reach into virtually airless space. Mercury has only one notable concentration of population, in the Trade City of Solar City (aka Sun City). Due to the strong electromagnetic field surrounding Mercury and the storms generated by the sharp twilight transition between heat and cold, the Twilight Belt is marked by powerful electric discharges. (A World is Born). The storms are worst at perihelion; the Terro-Mercurian colonists use metal pylons and copper cables to channel and collect the electric power from the charged atmosphere. Metals tend to become highly magnetized under these conditions, and normal navigational instruments are rendered useless.
Read more about this topic: Mercury In The Fiction Of Leigh Brackett
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