Strip 781 -- First Seen: 2011-09-01
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All of this should show up in June.

The Transcript For This Page

Panel 1
External view, the burner in orbit (about 5,000 kilometers) over Mercury. The planet is large enough in this frame we only see about 2/3 of its face, and it occupies about 2/3 of the frame. Despite being so close to the Sun, the planet's surface is fairly dark, with craters a bit shallower than the Moon's and a lot of white streaks emanating from a few of the larger craters. The interiors of the craters are often much lighter than the surface in general. We are over the 60th parallel, where there is one particularly large and streaky crater. A shuttle is descending from the burner to the surface (towards the northen pole).
Some reference photos:
http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/mercury_06_08/m22_PIA11245.jpg

North Pole, http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/WebImg/HarmonRadarFig1.jpg

Caption: To save reaction mass, a shuttle ferries passengers to the north polar spaceport from the burner, which remains in orbit.

Panel 2
Large panel. From an altitude of about four klicks, we see the Al Shams Madeena crater. It's 40 klicks in diameter, covered with an airskin that rises 4 klicks above the surface. Most of the crater floor is covered by a lake. We can barely make out various structures festooned around the inner crater rim above the water line (possibly by their lights glinting in the shadows). In the center of the lake is an island about 400 meters across, from which rises a slender tower, a copy of the Burj Khalifa.
Reference: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Burj_Khalifa
The tower rises a bit more than a kilometer above the island. The rest of the island is covered with garden-like vegitation.
We can see a tiny tube running from the bottom-foreground of the panel into the side of the crater wall.
If room permits, show a few other domed, smaller craters in the near background.
Remember we're at the pole, so shadows are very long.
Caption: From the spaceport it was a quick tube-train ride to Al Shams Madeena, the largest domed crater of Heliopolis, the sybaritic settlement at Mercury's north pole.
Caption: Inside the 40-kilometer diameter crater is a lake, and inside the lake, a small, circular island. On the island rises Burj Otaared, an intentional copy of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, more than a kilometer tall.
Caption: It is said that its 200 habitable floors contained the most expensive and lavish offices, condos, and apartments on Mercury.