Mercury in Bloom

She was determined to catch her death, out there! To her team, that is how it must have appeared. Nothing new, really; people in the spatial industry had been expecting Suzi Bonner to die for many years, without result.

Malice did not inform this expectation — a belief in physics, vehicle mechanics and human imperfections did. Crewing vehicles to the planetary bodies of this solar system required no ordinary portion of courage, deftness and plain luck; but whereas Suzi Bonner possessed these qualities in abundance, in the minds of her flight instructors, copilots and passengers, it seemed that her…