Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 29 Mar 2014.
Anderson, Poul, "Iron" IN Niven, Larry, Ed., The Man-Kzin Wars (London, 1989), pp.27-177.
(This
time, I really will try to regard 160 as a good round number of posts
for a month and hold off on any more posts until 1st April.)
"Iron"
is the kind of speculative fiction that I have come to expect from Poul
Anderson - speculation totally transcending the Man-Kzin Wars setting
of this particular story.
A red dwarf star and its five
planets numbered by their human discoverers from Prima to Quinta have
moved between and through gaseous nebulae for fifteen billion years.
That has been long enough for the gravitational fields of the planets
and their moons to attract atoms and molecules from the nebulae and even
from intergalactic space. This matter affects the surfaces of those
planets or moons that have no atmosphere to counteract it. Thus, a
carbon compound from space yellows the airless surfaces of the Secundan
and Tertian moons.
That carbon compound is too cold to
interact with complex organic compounds which therefore are a minor
part of the downdrift. Because the sun emits negligible ultraviolet and
solar wind, carbon-based molecules reach the airless Priman surface
intact and, because Prima is only 0.4 AU from the sun, its surface is
warm enough for the organics to interact. Sand, dust and meteor powder
provide colloidal surfaces where the organics cluster and concentrate
until complicated exchanges occur, seizing free carbon, hydrogen and
oxygen atoms from the downdrift and possibly also adapting to extract
matter from surface rocks. Growing patches meet and interact to form a
single multiplex molecule or polymer covering the planet with
differently colored areas displaying diverse local interactions. Other
planetary systems are not old enough and have not passed through enough
nebulae for these processes to have occurred in them.
On
the atmosphere-bearing Tertia, organics from space evolved into
intelligent beings who, lacking metals, became extinct in their stone
age when their planet chilled, plants died and rocks bound the
atmospheric oxygen. The planetary polymer is a more ingenious
extrapolation than the extinct intelligences and the dramatic history of
this wandering planetary system makes the Man-Kzin Wars seem very
parochial.
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