On the scorched surface of Mercury, humanity's future burns bright. Doug Norris and Martin Kincaid operate the Proxy Project from Earth, controlling unmanned mining machines across the solar system's most deadly world to extract the uranium that powers civilization. When the Proxies start failing in ways that defy explanation, Norris suspects something impossible: living intelligence in the radioactive chaos of Mercury's surface. The Raddies, gaseous entities born from the planet's toxic atmosphere, have been systematically destroying the machines. What begins as a desperate mission to save Earth's energy supply becomes something far stranger: a first contact with a form of life so alien it challenges everything we know about consciousness. The twist, when it arrives, reframes the entire conflict. Hamilton delivers pulpy adventure with genuine philosophical weight, asking whether intelligence must look like us to be real.
