80
Hg
Mercury
汞
200.59

The Outriders
开路人

We are the outriders of Quicksilver City. We ride ahead, sunward, forever maintaining a temperature thirty degrees hotter than the city that follows us.

我们是迅银城的开路人。我们面朝太阳，向前行驶，周围的温度永远比我们身后的城市高个三十度。

Our job is to scout out the Mercurial terrain for landslides, crevasses, and anything else that might hinder the city in its eternal journey around the planet. Ahead of us, the robot mines and smelters, factories and warehouses wake from hibernation as they fall out of the blistering heat of noon. After radio consultation with the autocomptrollers of Quicksilver City, they disgorge the raw materials the city will need this cycle.

我们的工作是找出水星的地形里的那些滑坡、裂缝以及其他任何可能阻碍这座城市绕着这颗行星永远前进的东西。行星。在我们前方，机器人矿山、冶炼厂、工厂还有仓库，一个个地从冬眠中醒来，它们冬眠，也会在炽热的正午中关闭。在迅银城的自动审计员对基进行远程操作后，它们将城市在这一轮需要的原材料准备出来。

Meanwhile, we blast, grade, and level. When we hit a scarp, out come the mini-nukes and down goes the rock. When we come to a crevasse, we fill it in. The city arrives to find a gentle ramp or level ground, and all of us outriders gone, long gone on our unending voyage into the sun.

与此同时，我们爆破、升级、铲平一切。当我们碰到陡峭的岩石时，我们就用迷你核弹把岩石都炸掉。当我们遇到裂缝时，我们就把它填平。这座城市到达时会发现了平缓的坡道或平坦的地面，而我们所有开路人早已不在这儿了，向太阳行进的漫长旅程一直在持续。

We were only a few hundred scientists suddenly stranded on a single mobile research station when civilization fell and Earth was destroyed. Not everyone thought we would survive. But we had the tools! We had the determination! Now Quicksilver City is a congeries of a thousand great buildings, all speeding around and around the planet, tenaciously staying in the human comfort range, growing, thriving, and above all never stopping.

当文明崩溃，地球被毁时，我们这仅剩的几百名科学家就这样突然被困在一个移动研究站上。并非所有人都觉得我们会生存下去。但是我们有工具！我们有决心！现在，白银城已经是一座成千上万座巨型建筑的集合体，它围绕着星球一圈又一圈地飞奔前进，顽强地时刻都待在正好是人类的舒适温度的地方，不断成长，蓬勃发展，永远不会停下来。

Here are the plain facts. The maximum surface temperature on Mercury is 427° C. Because there’s no atmosphere worth speaking of to retain that heat, at night the surface temperature plunges to a minimum of -173° C. Machines can sleep through the hot times and the cold. Human beings can’t. So we have to keep on the move.

这是简单的事实。水星的最高表面温度为427°C。因为没有大气层留住热量，晚上地表温度会骤降至最低-173°C。机器可以在炎热或寒冷中休眠。人类不能。因此，我们必须继续前进。

Mercury is roughly the size of Earth’s moon and a day here, from dawn to dusk, is 176 Earth days long. Which makes it possible to move fast enough to outrun the sunset. But the planet’s rotation is almost perpendicular to the orbital plain, so Quicksilver City can’t just keep plodding the same circular path over and over. Every rotation is different, a new set of challenges, something unexpected to be overcome.

水星大约相当于地球月球的大小，从黎明到黄昏，这里的一天长达176个地球日。这使得足够快的移动成为可能赶不上日落。但是行星的自转几乎垂直于轨道平原，因此迅银城不能一直保持一成不变的轨迹，一遍又一遍的圆形路径。每一轮都是不同的，这带来了一系列新的挑战，这是无解的问题。

So we ride. It all comes down to us—the outriders and pioneers. We ride and blast and curse and sweat, and we know that we’re the final and only hope that humanity has. That the human race is always and perpetually one day’s bad luck away from extinction.

所以我们骑行。这一切都靠我们了——开路人和先锋队。我们骑行、疾驰、诅咒、流汗，我们知道我们是最终的、也是人类现有的唯一的希望。人类离灭绝只差一天，而且永远只差一天。

But when has it ever been different?

但是什么时候事情都会有改变呢？