Venus

Three storage tanks of an early station, left full. The sulfuric acid they held ate them from the inside: one still stands, the roof of the second has rotted through, the third split open and spilled its load as a yellow crust.

Lava that cooled slowly set into columns, packed like organ pipes. Bismuth grew in the cracks between them; one column has sunk, and a barrel sits at the bottom of the gap.

Sulfur grows in spires where the volcano breathes. Five of them lean over a vent with lava at the bottom; their tips have gone to golden sulfide.

Under a pump tower on the tessera highlands a station kept the cisterns of Venus: the water locked in the acid of the sky was all the water there was. Four levels lie below — quarters, tanks, the mains and the garden of an agronomist who grew what drinks acid — down to the reservoir where the mother of the acid toads now sits.

Airships moored to this mast above the acid clouds. The ring is still there, with the lamp; the chain is torn, and the last balloon lies half-deflated beside its basket.

The same ring as on Earth, on a dais of the local stone and in the colors of this world: whoever set the gates out did it on every world at once. This one sleeps. It answers only one who has brought down the master of this world and lived through its trial; then lay the master's heart, the dust of the road and what this world gives into the ring, and it will join the other gates that are awake.

An arched bridge over a channel cut by lava. Whatever river it was built to cross is gone; only the lava stays in the bed. The span has a hole in the middle and the railings have fallen on one side.

A greenhouse dome of station ribs and glass. The pressure outside won: the crown was pushed in and the panes fell onto the beds. Under the hole, in the acid rain, one of the greenhouse seeds grew: its roots run over the floor and up the ribs, and the dome stands only because it is held. The airlock on the west side still has its door; the agronomist's locker beside it is sealed.

Three pools that boil without water. Their rims are sulfur crust, their beds golden sulfide; the smallest one has lava at the bottom. Someone paved a path between them.

The tesserae folded themselves, but these steps were cut. A stepped pyramid hewn from a ridge, its north-west corner still raw rock, its south-east slumped into rubble. Four pillars stand on top, and metal frost settles on the upper steps.

A small round lander on its crush ring, its copper dome gone green. It worked for an hour and has stood for a hundred years; the parachute still lies where it fell.