Pompeii: A Novel: Harris, Robert: 9780345475671: Amazon.com: Books

Available instantly

Audiobook
$0.00
with membership trial

Hardcover
$18.68

Mass Market Paperback
$7.07

Buy used: $7.07

Delivery Friday, April 5

Deliver to Canada

Used: Good | Details

Sold by Martistore

Fulfilled by Amazon

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Added to

Unable to add item to List. Please try again.

Image Unavailable

Image not available for
Color:

To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

Pompeii: A Novel Mass Market Paperback – October 26, 2004

by Robert Harris (Author)

9,516

See all formats and editions

All along the Mediterranean coast, the Roman empire’s richest citizens are relaxing in their luxurious villas, enjoying the last days of summer. The world’s largest navy lies peacefully at anchor in Misenum. The tourists are spending their money in the seaside resorts of Baiae, Herculaneum, and Pompeii.

But the carefree lifestyle and gorgeous weather belie an impending cataclysm, and only one man is worried. The young engineer Marcus Attilius Primus has just taken charge of the Aqua Augusta, the enormous aqueduct that brings fresh water to a quarter of a million people in nine towns around the Bay of Naples. His predecessor has disappeared. Springs are failing for the ﬁrst time in generations. And now there is a crisis on the Augusta’s sixty-mile main line—somewhere to the north of Pompeii, on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius.

Attilius—decent, practical, and incorruptible—promises Pliny, the famous scholar who commands the navy, that he can repair the aqueduct before the reservoir runs dry. His plan is to travel to Pompeii and put together an expedition, then head out to the place where he believes the fault lies. But Pompeii proves to be a corrupt and violent town, and Attilius soon discovers that there are powerful forces at work—both natural and man-made—threatening to destroy him.

With his trademark elegance and intelligence, Robert Harris, bestselling author of Archangel and Fatherland, re-creates a world on the brink of disaster.

From the Hardcover edition.

Report an issue with this product or seller

Print length

368 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Fawcett
Publication date

October 26, 2004
Dimensions

4.17 x 0.95 x 6.89 inches
ISBN-10

0345475674
ISBN-13

978-0345475671
See all details

Mary Beard
260
Paperback
$23.73
$10.04 shipping
Robert Harris
20,047
Paperback
$14.41
$9.70 shipping
Robin Wall Kimmerer
19,345
Paperback
in Ecology
$12.59
$9.97 shipping
Robert Harris
9,259
Paperback
$13.54
$9.71 shipping
Robert Harris
3,504
Paperback
$16.48
Get it Apr 12 - 29
$4.99 shipping
Robert Harris
1,705
Paperback
$12.99
$9.85 shipping

Popular Highlights in this book

What are popular highlights?

What was leadership, after all, but the blind choice of one route over another and the confident pretence that the decision was based on reason?
Highlighted by 434 Kindle readers
The natural impulse of men is to follow, he thought, and whoever has the strongest sense of purpose will always dominate the rest.
Highlighted by 329 Kindle readers
Men mistook measurement for understanding. And they always had to put themselves at the centre of everything. That was their greatest conceit.
Highlighted by 202 Kindle readers

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

Harris's historical novel begins in August, 79 B.C., two days before the eruption of Vesuvius. The hero is Marcus Attilius Primus, an aqueduct engineer who is investigating a mysterious blockage, apparently related to recent tremors, in the aqueduct that runs from Misenum to Pompeii. In addition to landing this prestigious job—it's the Empire's longest aqueduct—he has met a young woman who has the "same darkness of hair" and the "same voluptuousness of figure" as his dear departed first wife. The only problem is her father, a corrupt and powerful millionaire who is stealing from the water supply. Although the plot seems to owe more to "Chinatown" than to Pliny, Harris garnishes the action with seductive period detail, and the novel comes alive in the main event, a cataclysmic explosion with a thermal energy equal to a hundred thousand Hiroshimas.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Review

Acclaim for Robert Harris’s Pompeii, the #1 international bestseller

“Blazingly exciting...Pompeii palpitates with sultry tension....Harris provides an awe-inspiring tour of one of the monumental engineering triumphs on which the Roman empire was based....What makes this novel all but unputdownable...is the bravura ﬁctional flair that crackles through it. Brilliantly evoking the doomed society pursuing its ambitions and schemes in the shadow of a mountain that nobody knew was a volcano, Harris, as Vesuvius explodes, gives full vent to his genius for thrilling narrative. Fast-paced twists and turns alternate with nightmarish slow-motion scenes (desperate ﬁgures struggling to wade thigh-deep through slurries of pumice towards what they hope will be safety). Harris’s unleashing of the furnace ferocities of the eruption’s terminal phase turns his book’s closing sequences into pulse-rate-speeding masterpieces of suffocating suspense and searing action. It is hard to imagine a more thoroughgoingly enjoyable thriller.”
—London Sunday Times

“Breakneck pace, constant jeopardy and subtle twists of plot...a blazing blockbuster... The depth of the research in the book is staggering.”
—Daily Mail

“[A] stirring and absorbing novel...The ﬁnal 100 pages are terriﬁc, as good as anything Harris has done; and the last, teasing paragraph, done with the lightest of touches, is masterly.”
—The Sunday Telegraph

“The long-drawn-out death agony of [Pompeii and Herculaneum]—a full day of falling ash, pumice stone, and then, the ﬁnal catastrophe, a cloud of poisonous gas—is brilliantly done. Explosive stuff, indeed.”
—The Daily Telegraph

From the Hardcover edition.

From the Inside Flap

All along the Mediterranean coast, the Roman empire?s richest citizens are relaxing in their luxurious villas, enjoying the last days of summer. The world?s largest navy lies peacefully at anchor in Misenum. The tourists are spending their money in the seaside resorts of Baiae, Herculaneum, and Pompeii.

But the carefree lifestyle and gorgeous weather belie an impending cataclysm, and only one man is worried. The young engineer Marcus Attilius Primus has just taken charge of the Aqua Augusta, the enormous aqueduct that brings fresh water to a quarter of a million people in nine towns around the Bay of Naples. His predecessor has disappeared. Springs are failing for the ?rst time in generations. And now there is a crisis on the Augusta?s sixty-mile main line?somewhere to the north of Pompeii, on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius.

Attilius?decent, practical, and incorruptible?promises Pliny, the famous scholar who commands the navy, that he can repair the aqueduct before the reservoir runs dry. His plan is to travel to Pompeii and put together an expedition, then head out to the place where he believes the fault lies. But Pompeii proves to be a corrupt and violent town, and Attilius soon discovers that there are powerful forces at work?both natural and man-made?threatening to destroy him.

With his trademark elegance and intelligence, Robert Harris, bestselling author of Archangel and Fatherland, re-creates a world on the brink of disaster.

From the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Robert Harris is the author of Enigma, Fatherland, and Archangel. He has been a television correspondent with the BBC and a newspaper columnist for the London Sunday Times. His novels have sold more than six million copies and been translated into thirty languages. He lives in Berkshire, England, with his wife and three children.

From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

MARS

22 August Two days before the eruption

CONTICINIUM [04:21 hours]

A strong correlation has been found between the magnitude of eruptions and the length of the preceding interval of repose. Almost all very large, historic eruptions have come from volcanoes that have been dormant for centuries. —JACQUES-MARIE BARDINTZEFF, ALEXANDER R. McBIRNEY, VOLCANOLOGY (SECOND EDITION)

They left the aqueduct two hours before dawn, climbing by moonlight into the hills overlooking the port—six men in single file, the engineer leading. He had turfed them out of their beds himself—all stiff limbs and sullen, bleary faces—and now he could hear them complaining about him behind his back, their voices carrying louder than they realized in the warm, still air.

“A fool’s errand,” somebody muttered.

“Boys should stick to their books,” said another.

He lengthened his stride.

Let them prattle, he thought.

Already he could feel the heat of the morning beginning to build, the promise of another day without rain. He was younger than most of his work gang, and shorter than any of them: a compact, muscled figure with cropped brown hair. The shafts of the tools he carried slung across his shoulder—a heavy, bronze-headed axe and a wooden shovel—chafed against his sunburned neck. Still, he forced himself to stretch his bare legs as far as they would reach, mounting swiftly from foothold to foothold, and only when he was high above Misenum, at a place where the track forked, did he set down his burdens and wait for the others to catch up.

He wiped the sweat from his eyes on the sleeve of his tunic. Such shimmering, feverish heavens they had here in the south! Even this close to daybreak, a great hemisphere of stars swept down to the horizon. He could see the horns of Taurus, and the belt and sword of the Hunter; there was Saturn, and also the Bear, and the constellation they called the Vintager, which always rose for Caesar on the twenty-second day of August, following the Festival of Vinalia, and signaled that it was time to harvest the wine. Tomorrow night the moon would be full. He raised his hand to the sky, his blunt-tipped fingers black and sharp against the glittering constellations—spread them, clenched them, spread them again—and for a moment it seemed to him that he was the shadow, the nothing; the light was the substance.

From down in the harbor came the splash of oars as the night watch rowed between the moored triremes. The yellow lanterns of a couple of fishing boats winked across the bay. A dog barked and another answered. And then the voices of the laborers slowly climbing the path beneath him: the harsh local accent of Corax, the overseer—“Look, our new aquarius is waving at the stars!”—and the slaves and the free men, equals, for once, in their resentment if nothing else, panting for breath and sniggering.

The engineer dropped his hand. “At least,” he said, “with such a sky, we have no need of torches.” Suddenly he was vigorous again, stooping to collect his tools, hoisting them back onto his shoulder. “We must keep moving.” He frowned into the darkness. One path would take them westward, skirting the edge of the naval base. The other led north, toward the seaside resort of Baiae. “I think this is where we turn.”

“He thinks,” sneered Corax.

The engineer had decided the previous day that the best way to treat the overseer was to ignore him. Without a word he put his back to the sea and the stars, and began ascending the black mass of the hillside. What was leadership, after all, but the blind choice of one route over another and the confident pretense that the decision was based on reason?

The path here was steeper. He had to scramble up it sideways, sometimes using his free hand to pull himself along, his feet skidding, sending showers of loose stones rattling away in the darkness. People stared at these brown hills, scorched by summer brushfires, and thought they were as dry as deserts, but the engineer knew different. Even so, he felt his earlier assurance beginning to weaken, and he tried to remember how the path had appeared in the glare of yesterday afternoon, when he had first reconnoitered it. The twisting track, barely wide enough for a mule. The swaths of scorched grass. And then, at a place where the ground leveled out, flecks of pale green in the blackness—signs of life that turned out to be shoots of ivy reaching toward a boulder.

After going halfway up an incline and then coming down again, he stopped and turned slowly in a full circle. Either his eyes were getting used to it, or dawn was close now, in which case they were almost out of time. The others had halted behind him. He could hear their heavy breathing. Here was another story for them to take back to Misenum—how their new young aquarius had dragged them from their beds and marched them into the hills in the middle of the night, and all on a fool’s errand. There was a taste of ash in his mouth.

“Are we lost, pretty boy?”

Corax’s mocking voice again.

He made the mistake of rising to the bait: “I’m looking for a rock.”

This time they did not even try to hide their laughter.

“He’s running around like a mouse in a pisspot!”

“I know it’s here somewhere. I marked it with chalk.”

More laughter—and at that he wheeled on them: the squat and broad-shouldered Corax; Becco, the long-nose, who was a plasterer; the chubby one, Musa, whose skill was laying bricks; and the two slaves, Polites and Corvinus. Even their indistinct shapes seemed to mock him. “Laugh. Good. But I promise you this: either we find it before dawn or we shall all be back here tomorrow night. Including you, Gavius Corax. Only next time make sure you’re sober.”

Silence. Then Corax spat and took a half step forward and the engineer braced himself for a fight. They had been building up to this for three days now, ever since he had arrived in Misenum. Not an hour had passed without Corax trying to undermine him in front of the men.

And if we fight, thought the engineer, he will win—it’s five against one—and they will throw my body over the cliff and say I slipped in the darkness. But how will that go down in Rome—if a second aquarius of the Aqua Augusta is lost in less than a fortnight?

For a long instant they faced each other, no more than a pace between them, so close that the engineer could smell the stale wine on the older man’s breath. But then one of the others—it was Becco—gave an excited shout and pointed.

Just visible behind Corax’s shoulder was a rock, marked neatly in its center by a thick white cross.

Attilius was the engineer’s name—Marcus Attilius Primus, to lay it out in full, but plain Attilius would have satisfied him. A practical man, he had never had much time for all these fancy handles his fellow countrymen went in for. (“Lupus,” “Panthera,” “Pulcher”—“Wolf,” “Leopard,” “Beauty”—who in hell did they think they were kidding?) Besides, what name was more honorable in the history of his profession than that of the gens Attilia, aqueduct engineers for four generations? His great-grandfather had been recruited by Marcus Agrippa from the ballista section of Legion XII “Fulminata” and set to work building Rome’s Aqua Julia. His grandfather had planned the Anio Novus. His father had completed the Aqua Claudia, bringing her into the Esquiline Hill over seven miles of arches, and laying her, on the day of her dedication, like a silver carpet at the feet of the emperor. Now he, at twenty-seven, had been sent south to Campania and given command of the Aqua Augusta.

A dynasty built on water!

He squinted into the darkness. Oh, but she was a mighty piece of work, the Augusta—one of the greatest feats of engineering ever accomplished. It was going to be an honor to command her. Somewhere far out there, on the opposite side of the bay, high in the pine-forested mountains of the Apenninus, the aqueduct captured the springs of Serinus and bore the water westward—channeled it along sinuous underground passages, carried it over ravines on top of tiered arcades, forced it across valleys through massive siphons—all the way down to the plains of Campania, then around the far side of Mount Vesuvius, then south to the coast at Neapolis, and finally along the spine of the Misenum peninsula to the dusty naval town, a distance of some sixty miles, with a mean drop along her entire length of just two inches every one hundred yards. She was the longest aqueduct in the world, longer even than the great aqueducts of Rome and far more complex, for whereas her sisters in the north fed one city only, the Augusta’s serpentine conduit—the matrix, as they called it: the motherline—suckled no fewer than nine towns around the Bay of Neapolis: Pompeii first, at the end of a long spur, then Nola, Acerrae, Atella, Neapolis, Puteoli, Cumae, Baiae, and finally Misenum.

And this was the problem, in the engineer’s opinion. She had to do too much. Rome, after all, had more than half a dozen aqueducts: if one failed the others could make up the deficit. But there was no reserve supply down here, especially not in this drought, now dragging into its third month. Wells that had provided water for generations had turned into tubes of dust. Streams had dried up. Riverbeds had become tracks for farmers to drive their beasts along to market. Even the Augusta was showing signs of exhaustion, the level of her enormous reservoir dropping hourly, and it was this that had brought him out onto the hillside in the time before dawn when he ought to have been in bed.

From the leather po...

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Fawcett (October 26, 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0345475674
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0345475671
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.17 x 0.95 x 6.89 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,071,129 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #45,295 in Suspense Thrillers
- #68,321 in Historical Fiction (Books)
- #92,361 in Mysteries (Books)

Customer Reviews:
9,516

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Robert Harris

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Robert Harris is the author of Pompeii, Enigma, and Fatherland. He has been a television correspondent with the BBC and a newspaper columnist for the London Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph. His novels have sold more than ten million copies and been translated into thirty languages. He lives in Berkshire, England, with his wife and four children.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5

9,516 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

James Barton Phelps

A Great Read: Vesuvius Erupts in Verbal Technicolor!

Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2008

Verified Purchase

POMPEII
Robert Harris
(Random House 2003)

Here in "Pompeii", a novel, author Robert Harris has told the story of the eruption of Vesuvius (August 24-25 A.D.79) in verbal technicolor and has given us a cast of many characters from a clean cut young Roman engineer (Marcus Attilius) down to a couple of crafty villains (Corax and Ampliatus) who are almost stereotypically evil, one employed to kill Marcus, the other the employer. There is mystery, romance, adventure, fact and history aplenty in this great tale and it's a great read for everybody from the high school student to this writer who is past 90. But it's pretty much a guy's book. I read it when it was first published and have just reread it for the joy of reading a good story.
The plot is simple. The Aqua Augusta, a 200 year old engineering miracle runs from the springs near Rome for a hundred miles south round the Bay of Naples behind Vesuvius and behind Pompeii to the Roman naval base of Misenum at a constant decline of one inch per hundred feet to deliver water by gravity flow to Pompeii, Herculaneum and Puteoli. But on August 22, two days before the eruption, Marcus Attilius, the young engineer just seconded by higher authority to take charge of the aqueduct, discovers two things. One, there is sulfur in the water. Two, somewhere up the line - past Pompeii but before Herculaneum the line is blocked and unless reopened in 24 hours half the population of Campania will have no water!
The first 200 pages of this well researched novel set the stage for the eruption. You are in the naval base with Pliny the elder, the old general and avowed naturalist, now retired, run to fat but not to leisure. You are also there with Ampliatus, ex slave, cruel master, self-made millionaire with a beautiful daughter (Corelia), an ambitious politician and completely evil. You sail in the fast trireme with Pliny from Misenum to Pompeii where Atillius gathers his workmen and his supplies and goes out to find the stoppage; and you are with him while he finds and frees the obstruction just behind Vesuvius.
In the meantime strange things are happening - waves on the sea, but no wind, flocks of birds where birds should not be flocking, vapor rising from the ground, wine shuddering in the wine glass - not much, but some, and more than intermittently. You are immersed in Roman culture, well and authoritatively set out by Mr. Harris; and you tend to recall your high school Latin (if you had it)
The obstruction freed, Attilius, fascinated with the mountain, goes to the top of Vesuvius where justice done to Corax and you see the crater just about to erupt. Then on the way down he is flattened by the first explosion; and the last 75 pages of the book take you into the explosion, into Pompeii and into the ash.
I had always thought that when Vesuvius erupted everything happened at once; people died instantly where they were and where they were embalmed for centuries until excavation stared in the 1800s. Not so. The eruption went on for 36 hours in various stages and included several things - a rain of pumice which covered the surface of the ocean to three feet and made it impossible for the rowers on the trireme to dip their oars, rocks raining - small ones, big ones - heat, vapor and the huge explosions accompanied by waves of heat (500 degrees centigrade) which brought instantaneous death and destruction. Some numbers: The original explosion released the energy of 100,000 Hiroshima atom bombs. 1.5 million tons of magma and lava exited the crater at a speed of Mach1 and reached a height of 35,000 meters before dissipating over hundreds of square miles of land and sea.
All this is laid out in language which I have called verbal Technicolor. Great descriptive writing. When you are through with this great read - and, yes, Attilius and Coralia do escape the inferno - you know you have been treated to a really good book which took your mind off the troubles of our contemporary world. And that's eminently worth while!

4 people found this helpful

Gerald A. Vanslambrouck

Very Realistic Story

Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2024

Verified Purchase

I’ve always been fascinated by Pompeii. A number of years ago; I had the opportunity to visit the site. Harris’ story of the man who maintained the aqueduct system suppling water to Pompeii put me right back to the time of the eruption of Vesuvius.

Nothing on earth can quite match the therapeutic effects of a Roman health spa resort purification by fire.

Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2018

Verified Purchase

The novel Pompeii, by Robert Harris, published in 2003 is an absolutely fascinating snapshot and account of life in Italy in the bustling coastal communities which had sprung up along the foothills of Mount Vesuvius by the year 79 A.D. You get a sense of real purpose and opportunity motivating the Roman citizens, subjects, and inhabitants residing or frequenting there. Senators, magistrates, scientists, admirals, engineers, naturalists, journalists, philosophers, prophets, builders, shepherds, farmers, craftsmen, and their entourage all make their homes there. They have transformed the landscape by their creations and the fruits of their labor with no small measure of assistance from a great number of soldiers, sailors, other conscripts, and indentured servants. You begin to feel the repercussions and the sudden impact of civilization at the stupendous height of imperialism on all of mankind. After all, building a thriving metropolis with all its amenities has indeed been a daunting task.
To insure their future, the "sibyl" seeks for a favorable sign. Where has the raven on the rock perch gone? The bird is missing. A worse omen.
Reading further, you get the distinct simultaneous impressions of longing and foreboding. But something is dreadfully wrong with this pastoral scene, something that you cannot easily put a finger on, something that you cannot simply repair with baling wire, duct tape, or a patch of Portland cement. The reader of the novel becomes intrigued by the developing mystery, the majesty, and the mounting suspense which has been left unvented. There are other indicators that provide solid scientific proof and evidence of unusual natural phenomena. What's happening? Many ask. Many wonder.
For instance, the people have literally built their homes on shaky ground. The ground trembles. Fish are found floating in the hatchery ponds. A river runs dry. The air is fouled and becomes putrid. Hence, the emperor of Rome, "Titus Caesar," dispatches a knowledgeable expert in such matters, a hydraulics engineer, of all things--"Attilius" by name, to discover the real reason for all the troubling activity in the region. In my humble opinion, what the leading character encounters and the actions he takes, gives the novel substance. It lends credence to what makes life bearable and tolerable.
In the final analysis, while Pompeii has forged its place in history, the purely fictional story of Attilius provides incredible insight into the human condition. He walks through the gates of the Pan-Hellenic Council and enters into their overheated abode. It is a blast furnace in there. His trial and tribulation is more a story of human evolution, and the purification of his soul, rather than any form of revolution.
R. Royce sat and watched an extraordinarily delightful cooking show on television. "Whew who!" exclaimed the charming, beautiful blonde chef as she removed the main course, an iron skillet of well-seasoned, steaming, and bubbling baked tomato, zucchini, and squash basking in their natural juices and infinite glory from the oven. "Whoa ho ho!" she retorted, carefully tilting the accompanying round pan of freshly-baked apple pie dessert toward the viewing audience, revealing its heaping, golden brown, flaky crust. The smell of cinnamon and the other spices permeating the air must have been totally intoxicating. He had become mystified watching the scene unfold. He felt utterly astounded and dumbfounded. He was hungry for more! He'd never seen a finer, more eloquent meal prepared with any two of his favorite dishes. Perhaps this is a slight exaggeration, but no matter. He was given over to hyperbole.
"The preparation of such a wonderful meal deserves a toast!" he said to no one in particular, and meandered into the kitchen without a care in the world. He extracted a chilled bottle of a most excellent sparkling wine from the refrigerator, poured half a glass-full, then sat down at the table to relish the moment. He helped himself to the covered-dish zucchini casserole left for him there on a trivet, the dish still very warm to the touch. Quite satisfied with the main course, he sliced into a freshly-baked golden-delicious apple pie, also warm from the oven. Thus, his midday meal proved most tasty.
After eating his fill, he reached over and read the note on the table: "Hope you enjoyed lunch, especially prepared just for you. Gotta' run, Meghan."
"Will wonders never cease?" he inquired out loud. It was uncanny how similar the meal had been to the one in the cooking program.
Royce had discovered that it had snowed overnight. He retrieved a broom from the closet and swept the white powdery snow off of the exposed body surfaces of his automobile and started up the motor. He switched on the heater, raised the temperature level, and put the fan on high in order to expedite melting the frosted ice from the windows. The very next day, another cold one, he had to repeat the process, since it had snowed again. He called Meghan on the cell-phone to find out when she might return.
"Thanks for the lunch," he said. "You didn't have to go to all the trouble. I could have gone out and grabbed a sandwich."
"Oh, I didn't make you lunch," said Meghan. "Your neighbor dropped by to introduce herself and left the covered dishes on the table as I was leaving. Did you know that she has a cooking show on television?"
"I do now," said Royce. "By the way, how are the road conditions out there?"
"Very unfavorable," said Meghan. "You should stay home if you don't have to go anywhere."
"How are you able to drive then?" asked Royce.
"My car drives perfectly well on a solid sheet of ice in frozen sub-zero temperatures," she volunteered, without hesitation.
"Well, be careful out there. Otherwise, I might have to send out a rescue party and search for you," he said.
"If I'm not back by five p.m., you can tow me home yourself," she said. "I'll be at the office finishing up some paperwork and finalizing last minute details."
"We're going to make a fortune from this deal," said Cornelius Korn, when Royce relayed the news to him. "So long as the plan doesn't go off half-baked."
"According to Meghan, our firm has submitted a successful bid for a major industrial contract to provide the water-lines necessary for an upcoming mission to Mars," said Royce. The flexible double-walled tubes are made from a very cleverly designed, light-weight, space-age material, actually an insulated titanium-reinforced carbon-fiber composite. They're very durable, puncture resistant, and unaffected by severe temperature extremes. The space between the two tube walls can contain super-heated steam. This allows a steady stream of liquefied water to flow through the central-core interior tube from the heated water reservoir, which is really only a large tank of melted ice-water at the source, all the way to the underground base station a couple of miles away, without freezing somewhere along the way. As you may be aware, the base station installation has been located deep inside a cavern to protect astronauts from the harsh conditions of life on Mars.
"As I have often heard it said before," said Korn. "Good luck with that."

8 people found this helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

Nelson Garzeri

História e thriller misturados...

Reviewed in Brazil on February 23, 2024

Verified Purchase

História e thriller misturados... Leitura fácil e divertido

Translate review to English

Maria Jane

Epic

Reviewed in Canada on November 29, 2022

Verified Purchase

Thoroughly enjoyed this book and have re read it several times. To take the POV of an Aquarius was genius. Historical fiction at its finest

Shane O.

Pompeii

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 6, 2024

Verified Purchase

Another great book from Robert Harris.

Wolfgang Pöschl

Gute Synergie zwischen fiction und non fiction

Reviewed in Germany on May 27, 2023

Verified Purchase

Gutes Buch. Harris hat sich professionel mit der Wasserleitungstechnik der Römer auseinandergesetzt. Die Charakterisierung von Plinius ist realistisch, genau wie die Handlung selbst.

Translate review to English

vanderpoel

excellent, history made into a novel.

Reviewed in the Netherlands on August 11, 2022

Verified Purchase

to read what the body-casts in pompeii felt during their final hours.

See more reviews

Get to Know Us

Make Money with Us

Amazon Payment Products

Let Us Help You

English $USD - U.S. Dollar United States

© 1996-2024, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates