Venus Approach Okay, so after I did a terraformed Mars image, I decided to go for Venus. I searched high and low for a decent map on the net. The best I found was one by Runar Thorvaldsen for Celestia. But for various reasons, that one didn't meet my needs. Fortunately, he also included a complete 2048X1024 topological map from NASA in his download, so I used that image as the basis of my own Venus map. I thought it would be easy, but it took me all day yesterday using the flood fill and paintbrush tools to get the coastlines done. Then I had to mess with colors and contrasts and such to get it to look decent. I'm not claiming this is 100% accurate, as far as altitude goes -- some of the color changes were subtle and the flood fill tool can do annoying things if you hit the wrong pixel -- bit in the grossest scale (continents and major islands) I think it's pretty close. And since my imagined method for terraforming Venus involved about ten thousand dinosaur -killer sized balls of ice dropped onto the planet from the Kuiper belt (and that's just Phase One), well some smaller scale details might get, um... altered in the process. I used a similar process to the last image - separate spheres for land, water, clouds and atmosphere to make the image of Venus five hundred years from now. Parts from the space freighter in the last image made the orbital transfer station. I included the hokey interface at the bottom to give me a chance to show off the map. I need to find myself some nice tech-looking brushes for embellishments like that (or figure out how to do it on my own). Anyway, thanks for looking and for commenting on my previous work. --- Finally, the idiots let us dock. It's not like Belter electronics are going to rot in the hold -- not like the Venusian synthetics I hope to trade them for -- but styles change and there's always a newer model with another useless new function. The gadgets might last a dozen years, but the Venusians can get so style conscious that nobody would be caught dead using last year's model. It didn't help that I did a high delta-V flight plan out of Psyche -- almost a straight line. It got me here before the Hazelwood, but I only have two days head start on getting the brokers to pay a premium. And I'm down to fumes on fuel to boot. God, I hate these Venusian bureaucrats. Worse thing is, you can't even bribe them. Lyndia Beulke, Captain LSS Barnaby, 27 April 2516