Ronnie Bayer, age 13, of Wichita, Kan 

There is a great abundance of plant and animal life on this luxury planet of ours  However, all our living things exist within a thin layer at the surface of the globe, Birds take to the air, certain animals and plant roots burrow into the ground  Most fish live near the surface of the sea and even the few that dwell in the deep ocean live less than three miles below sea level 

Most of 'the living things we know need oxygen, water, food and a moderate temperature  And none of these things are to be found on the planet Mercury  Certainly life as we know it cannot exist there, However we know of certain bacteria which can get along without oxygen and certain small plants which can live in the seething steam of a geyser  Perhaps there are forms of life which could adapt themselves to conditions on the planet Mercury  This is not likely, but we cannot be sure 

Mercury, of course, is the little planet nearest the sun  It swings around its small orbit in 88 days and it rotates on its axis once in 88 days  This means that one side of the little planet forever faxes the sun and the other side forever faces the starlit sky  Half of Mercury has eternal day and the other half has eternal night  The little planet has no blanket of atmosphere to soften the scorching heat of day or the bitter cold of night,

Temperatures on the daylit side are thought to reach about 770 degrees Fahrenheit  which is hot enough to melt tin and lead  If these metals are present near the surface, they must be pools and rivers of molten metal, There may be mountains and ragged peaks of solid rock poking above the seething surface like islands above the waters of a lake 

The side facing away from the sun is exposed to the bitter cold of outer space and the temperature may be near absolute zero, which in minus 273 centigrade degrees 

All the other planets have some kind of atmosphere to moderate the

temperature  Mercury seems to have both the hottest and the coldest

spots in the entire Solar System 

The average distance of Mercury from the sun is 36 million miles  However, its orbit is eccentric or irregular, so that the distance from the sun varies between 28 and 43 million miles  This variation creates a narrow twilight zone between the night and day sides of the planet  Here the sun rises and sets and temperatures are more moderate, If mankind ever builds a base or settlement on Mercury, it would be somewhere in this narrow belt of twilight,