Phaeton

Poul Anderson, Harvest Of Stars, 53.

Phaeton reminds us of Satan. When, every fourteen standard years, the planet passes near Alpha Centauri A:

frozen gas explodes into geysers and clouds;

melting ice becomes cataracts and floods;

coasts are "...drowned..." (p. 457);

there are hurricanes, rainstorms and lightning;

stones torrent from mountains;

there is blazing light and hard radiation.

Kyra and Rinndalir explore Phaeton when it is farthest from A and crusted in snow.

Inside Perun

Poul Anderson, Harvest Of Stars, 52.

When the interior of the asteroid has been fully developed, birds, moths and bats will fly free. There will be flowering vines and a stream running through a trench along a passage. Rock passages are "...polished glass-smooth..." (p. 451) and lit in changing colors. Sculptured pillars, "...studded with gems and crystals...," (p. 452) are animated by the variable light. In the light gravity, Lunarians jump between platforms in a downward shaft. Spreading his cloak, Rinndalir floats like a leaf. His spacious chamber has a viewdome ceiling showing the heavens, including Alpha Centauri A and B. As on Luna and Proserpina, the Lunarians transform stone chambers into paradisal habitats.

Lunarians In Centaurian Space

Poul Anderson, Harvest Of Stars, 52.

At Alpha Centauri, the Lunarians colonize the asteroids. Perun a thousand kilometers at its widest, is too small for cities, but does have a north polar spacefield approached by roads surrounded by domes, masts, pyramids and colonnades. The spacefield has hemicylindrical buildings and a control radar. The Lunarians have built much in few years and are now constructing a spaceship that might travel to Proxima Centauri and further.

Observe how Harvest Of Stars transcends its earlier chapters and also how much information is packed into each of the later chapters.

Demeter Before The Colonists Arrive

Poul Anderson, Harvest Of Stars, 48.

There are self-replicating robots, some controlled by downloaded human personalities. A flyer controlled by download Kyra Davis and carrying download Gabriel Berecz takes off from a landing field with hangers. Currently, Kyra, a former space pilot, is embodied in the flyer whereas Berecz, an ecologist, is inside a fieldwork body with caterpillar treads, telescopic sensors and many arms with diverse hands and is accompanied by "robugs" (p. 424)

Below, and around the planet, nanomachines reduce rock to mineral grains, then robots infuse synthesized humus into the grains. Wind carries organic matter onto the lower mountain slopes where rain mingles it with natural lithosols so that, with the addition of spores and seeds, moss and tussocks grow on the slopes. Terrestrial life will kill the animalcules in the Ionian Ocean. Port Fireball comprises buildings containing industrial and scientific facilities where the Taunus River enters Shelter Bay. Cooling towers rise from the fuel plant on Hydrogen Island. There are buildings, places and names without, as yet, a human community.

Imported earthworms, lacking natural enemies, multiply explosively, destabilizing gradients and causing a landslide from which Kyra barely rescues Berecz. Loosening of the substrate and the resultant chemical changes leach out alkalis, increasing the pH of the soil and thus killing vegetation. This can be corrected by adding appropriate substances to the humus. However:

other poisons will act;
bacteria will mutate;
some DNA will become viruses;
imbalances between species can be lethal;
the Demetrian ecology must become self-maintaining.

The Centaurian System

Poul Anderson, Harvest Of Stars, 40.

Alpha Centauri A and B are in orbit around each other;

Proxima, a red dwarf, discovered telescopically, is on a wider orbit;

(Beta Centauri, elsewhere in Centaurus, is the second brightest star in the constellation);

A had three planets but captured Phaeton from B;

A's outermost planet, Demeter, bears life;

B had two planets but lost Phaeton;

between A and B is the forbidden zone of chaotically orbiting asteroids;

Phaeton passed through the forbidden zone and now orbits A on retrograde comet-like ellipses that will make it collide with Demeter in a thousand years;

human beings will colonize Demeter;

Lunarians led by Rinndalir will colonize the Centaurian asteroids rather than staying in the Solar System where social evolution is not to their liking.

Exploring Demeter

Poul Anderson, Harvest Of Stars, 6, Database.

The round trip to Alpha Centauri is STL. The explorers are robots. One contains a downloaded human personality. On Demeter, there is rain and wind and there are two suns in the sky.

A fifteen-centimeter insect-like biologist robot probing a green-brown vegetable mat with its tendrils transmits to a balloon-borne receiver which amplifies the signal and re-transmits it to the mainframe computer at the station.

Through his robot body's treads, download Guthrie feels fine grit and damp soil. Through its eye stalks, he sees a beach strewn with weed, shells and dead animals like worms or jellyfish and the surfacing of a mother vessel for robots studying the sea. Production facilities make investigators which are then flown around the planet. Guthrie also has a legged body. He makes discoveries and devises procedures transcending the abilities of computer programs.

Olympus Mons And The Milky Way

Poul Anderson, Harvest Of Stars, 4, p. 56.

From half way up Olympus Mons, Kyra sees:

rocky vastness;
subtle desert hues;
rose-petal sky;
a dust storm;
a crater.

From an asteroid:

a multitude of stars;
blue Vega;
amber Arcturus;
smoldering Betelgeuse (important in the Technic History);
"The Milky Way torrented in frost and silence."

From the surface of the Saturnian moon, Enceladus:

glittering ice;
a few stars;
huge Saturn with cyclopean storms and rings seen edge on;
two other moons.

The Planet Where The Meteor Crash Landed

Poul Anderson, World Without Stars, VI.

Diameter 3% greater than Terrestrial;
weight 0.655 standard;
an old system so few heavy elements;
no metallic core;
sima to the center;
solar gravity has prevented satellites;
rotation slowed, then tides reversed it;
sidereal year 9.5 Terrestrial days;
3 weeks dark, 3 light;
mountains have eroded and not been replaced;
most planetary surface shallowly submerged;
solar radiation red and infrared;
steamy heat;
sea level atmosphere equivalent to a Terrestrial mountaintop;
photosynthesis probably based on an enzyme-chain process;
animals less energetic but no less active;
multiple hearts in dissected specimens;
intelligent, tailed bipeds in canoes.

On The Planet II

Poul Anderson, World Without Stars, Chapter VI.

Both day and night are several standard days long and the nights are extremely dark. The galaxy, "God," is sometimes overhead. Tusocky growths correspond to grass. These growths, the broad leaves on trees and the reed-like plants on the mud beach are bronze or yellow.

"Photosynthesis under a red dwarf star can't use chlorophyll." (p. 36)

Plants conceal many mud holes. Vines with sucker mouths grab passersby. The mouths cannot break human skin but a man has to be cut free.

Axial tilt is slight. Wild life is visible and audible. Web-arctoid giants keep away probably because the new-comers smell inedible but a massive horned beast attacks and keeps crawling forward even after it has been downed by two torch guns.

The stranded spacemen have not only packaged supplies but also a food recycling plant whose output tastes like shrimp but can also be flavored. It is hard work to establish a camp. The food plant uses a small nuclear generator. I cannot remember any of this from previous readings.

On The Planet

Poul Anderson, World Without Stars, Chapter V.

The Meteor is sunk in a lake with its after section flooded but its nose above water. Two men and the main reactor have gone through a hole in the side of the engine compartment. Screens and ventilators are dead. The only light is from dim, green "evershine panels." (p. 30)

Outside:

the huge, red sun is dim enough to look at;
the sky is deep purple;
there is eternal twilight;
the lake sheens crimson;
the land is barely visible;
leathery-winged creatures croak hoarsely as they fly above;
the air is dank and tropical.

Argens is not sure that he wants to live but Valland insists that it should only take them a few years to get off the planet and Mary O'Meara is waiting for him. As Neil Gaiman's Desire says of the Emperor Norton, his madness keeps him sane.

The Yonderfolk II

Poul Anderson, World Without Stars, Chapter III.

See how much information is condensed into each chapter. I had not finished about the Yonderfolk earlier but had to go out.

In Poul Anderson's "What Shall It Profit?," human beings shielded underground from all radiation are immortal but they have to stay shielded underground so what is the point? Such immortality is a dead end. Are the intergalactic Yonderfolk in their almost radiation-free environment naturally immortal? Argens thinks not because quantum processes, viruses, chemicals or other unknown factors also mutate cells. If they are not, then can human beings sell them an antithanatic? It is not always possible to develop a synthetic virus that will destroy any cells that do not conform to a particular race's genetic code.

These Yonderfolk are squat, scaly and several-handed with complicated sponge-like heads. Handicapped by needing radiation shielding within the galaxy, they invited the company to visit them and gave coordinates and velocities for every planet in their system. Valland comments that translating the maths must have been difficult and thus anticipates a problem that will transpire.

The Yonderfolk

Poul Anderson, World Without Stars, Chapter III.

Some intergalactics with an unpronounceable name who breathe hydrogen and drink liquid ammonia (like the Jovians in Three Worlds To Conquer?) have contacted human civilization. The co-owners of Felipe Argens' ship, the Meteor, hope to trade for new scientific knowledge, insights, ideas or art forms. These Yonderfolks' knowledge of the intergalactic stars might lead to other planets profitable for human beings while their sheer difference has implications for what else they might know.

Large hydrogen clouds condensed into galaxies but did not leave an absolute vacuum between them, especially not in the earliest period when the universe had not yet expanded very far. Smaller intergalactic condensations became star clusters. Then, supernovae enriched the interstellar medium, thus producing second and third generation stars. Galactic gravity broke up the clusters. Matter dispersed so far that star formation ceased. The brighter stars burned out, leaving widely scattered, old, metal-poor, red dwarfs, each lasting for fifty billion years on the main sequence.

The Yonderfolk might have got beyond the Stone Age by experimenting with electrostatics, voltaic piles or ceramics. Ceramic tubes filled with electrolytic solution for conductors might have given them electrodynamics. Then, perhaps after millions of years of civilization, they would extract light metals from ores. Even with the space jump, they avoided galaxies because they cannot stand the radiation. Heavily screened, they reached the galactic rim and a planet like their own but with a factor from the company owning the Meteor. The language barrier was more difficult than usual.

A Blue Planet

Poul Anderson, The Avatar, XXXIX.

In the globular cluster after the sixth jump:

a planet that is a deeper blue than either Earth or Demeter;

white clouds that are also slightly amber;

rusty continents;

gleaming snow on peaks and altiplanos;

vivid sunrise and sunset;

no polar caps;

three moons;

gravity a fifth again as Earth's;

thick oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, too concentrated at sea level for human beings;

greenhouse effect making high latitudes hot and the equator unbearable;

only the uppermost plateaus habitable;

life similar to Earth's everywhere but no sign of intelligence;

possibly chlorophyl but also something else in the vegetation;

very little chance of survival without seeds or synthesizers.

Old Planets

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, Chereion is an old planet. In Anderson's The Avatar,  XXXIII, Pandora is another:

shrunken aquamarine oceans;
sharp brown blots of continents;
a few olive clouds;
dust storms;
no ice or snow;
livid, gleaming salt beds;
a day as long as a month;
core radioactives long spent;
no crustal movements;
dead seas, crusted wastes and brine marshes;
much atmosphere lost to heat and solar wind;
no longer a strong magnetic field;
greenhouse effect;
soaring temperatures;
sparse vegetation;
bitterly cold nights and inferno days;
ruined cities;
a regular radio signal from the surface;
a solar-powered broadcasting satellite, pitted by micrometeoroids;
no sign of current inhabitants.

After The First Jump III

See After The First Jump II.

Nearer the surface, gravity compresses the atmosphere hard. Joelle in Chinook guides Williwaw, holothetically linked to its instruments. Gravity is Jovian. The atmosphere tosses and tumbles the boat and fills it with noise. Williwaw passes through monstrous storms of thunder, lightning, gales, rain and hail, then enters a peaceful region of thick warm air between a violet and indigo sky and an aureate ocean of intricately moving clouds. Danaans, royal blue, whale-sized and -shaped, with wings, arms or trunks and hands, rise from the clouds and dance around Williwaw.

Addendum: Rereading Anderson's text, I have had to amend this post slightly.

After The First Jump II

See After The First Jump.

The ship's boat, Williwaw, descends into the planet's atmosphere:

the hemisphere below is amber and gold;

on one horizon, there are red and purple bands and cosmic blackness;

on the opposite horizon, orange clouds reflect dawn light from the tiny red dwarf sun;

the day side of the planet is bright and changeable with undulating streams and whirlpools;

the explorers discuss their beliefs in God and life;

Caitlin names the planet after Danu, the mother goddess of the Tuatha de Danaan.

After The First Jump

Poul Anderson, The Avatar, XXVII.

The spaceship, Chinook, has jumped by T machine to another region of space:

the bearings of nearby galaxies show that Chinook is now about 500 light years from Sol towards Hercules;

the position is defined more precisely when, e.g., Deneb and the Orion Nebula have been identified;

Chinook has been transported to the system of a red dwarf with five planets, none terrestroid;

the ship orbits a Jovoid planet with twelve moons;

the holothetes, a woman and a Betan linked to the ship's computer, detect artificial radio transmissions in the planet's atmosphere.

Suleiman III

See Suleiman II.

Suleiman has little axial tilt, therefore no seasons;

bluejack grows all year round in the cool, dry Uplands;

hunters and gatherers pick it, then regularly rendezvous with nomadic herders who barter for the bluejack;

a caravan takes it to the city about twice a month;

Solar, i.e., the Solar Spice and Liquors Company, exchanges Technic goods for bales of bluejack;

four times a Terrestrial year, a Cynthian ship collects the bluejack;

the Cynthians deliver letters, journals, books, tapes and news;

scientists study the planet, hoping to win reputations;

for the factors, like Dalmady, the post is a first step on a career ladder;

plantations would be more efficient but too costly to be profitable.

Poul Anderson goes into considerable detail about how an interstellar economy works.

The Last Planet

The last planet explored by Laure in the Cloud Universe:

unlike the others, it has an atmosphere - thin, mainly noble gases;

he wants to check element distribution on the surface;

the charged ionosphere prevents him from radioing the orbiting Jaccavrie;

nebular friction causes the planet to spiral towards its primary;

surface temperature is about 50 degrees Centigrade;

very little water;

large red dust storms;

a fiery ring of refracted light;

a jumbled plain;

chaotic terrain;

bare mountains;

gleaming black and brown rock;

deep purple sky;

hard ground;

1.22 Gs caused by planetary density;

strong wind;

high radiation;

heavy metals and radioactives -

- suddenly an exploding sky. Our old friend, the lethal unexpected.

As on Satan and Mirkheim, Poul Anderson creates drama in an uninhabited and uninhabitable environment.

Lochlann

While on Gwydion, Raven, a Commandant of the Oakenshaw Ethnos in the Windhome Mountains on Lochlann, remembers his home planet:

red sun;
sheer mountains;
incessant winds;
gnarled, dwarfed trees;
moorlands;
ice plains;
salt oceans too dense for bodies to sink;
a peasant's house with a rope holding the roof against the gales;
his father's castle above a glacier;
hoofs in the courtyard;
bandits;
burned villages;
dead men;
smashed cannon.

Oh well, let's hope humanity does spread among the stars even if it takes burned villages and smashed cannon with it.

In A Dennitzan Forest

Dominic Flandry and his fiancee, Kossara Vymezal, land on her home planet, Dennitza, where:

gravity is 7% less than Terran;
ground cover is mahovina turf and woodland duff;
ever-green equivalents are low and blue-black;
there are shrubs but no underbrush;
the smaller, nearer moon, Mesyatz, moves visibly;
human Dennitzans see an orlick, a winged theroid, in the markings on Mesyatz;
ychani tell humorous fairy tales about Ri, who went to live on Mesyatz;
Flandry and Kossara eat fried riba, caught from the river, then cloud apples;
guslares trill;
a horned bull leads a herd of yelen;
Kossara's uncle, the Gospodar, keeps a lodge from which he hunts gromatz, yegyupka and ice trolls;
Flandry calls the view "'Austere but lovely...'" -Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 521.

We must not imagine a green Terrestrial landscape with feathered birds overhead. This post really belongs on the Poul Anderson's Cosmic Environments blog but, because more people read Poul Anderson Appreciation, I have put it here first.

Yet Another Grass Equivalent

"The ground was low, wet, thickly covered with a soft and intensely green moss-like turf. It sparkled with a million water drops. Fog rolled and streamed, slowly breaking up as the sun climbed. The air was cool, and filled the nostrils with dampness. His tread muffled and upborne by the springy growth, his companions unspeaking and half blurred in the mist, Flandry moved through silence like a dream." (p. 120) (For full reference, see here.)

We often learn what other planets use for grass. (Scroll down.)

How many senses do we have here? Wet, soft, green, sparkling, coolness, dampness, silence.

Flandry and his companions walk to the Trees of Ranau. There are over a thousand enormous "Trees," growing a kilometer or more apart.

The Trees Of Ranau

The image shows a Terrestrial redwood. In the lower gravity of Unan Besar, the ten thousand year old Trees of Ranau (scroll down) grow much bigger:

"The slim higher boughs would each have made a Terran oak; the lowest were forests in themselves..."
-Poul Anderson, "The Plague of Masters" IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 1-147 AT p. 121.

The huge branches can support their own weight because their cores are nearly as strong as steel whereas most of their thickness is as light as balsa, protected by hard gray bark. Bright, mirror-like upper leaves reflect light down to lower foliage which otherwise would be fatally enshadowed. The planet has only one grove of these Trees because they are succumbing to faster evolving parasites. The Ranauans preserve their grove by living in symbiosis with it.

On Nyanza

One kind of Nyanzan ship is called a "...kraken-chaser..." ("The Game of Glory," p. 321) (For full reference, see here.) And see Kraken.

Is it feasible that people would colonize a planet where a town or city is submerged at high tide so that buildings would have to be watertight with air locks? Nyanzans live by fishing, hunting kraken, collecting shells at low tide or diving for them at high tide. They work and travel in ships and swim short distances wearing transparent helmets and aqualungs that electrolyze oxygen from water. Thus, they are always on or under the water except on the rare occasions when they visit the single island on the planet for trade or diplomacy. (The Imperial Resident resides there.)

"Sunset blazed across violet waters. The white spume of the breakers was turned an incredible gold; tide pools on the naked black skerry were like molten copper. The sky was deep blue in the east, still pale overhead, shading to a clear cloudless green where the sun drowned. Through the surf's huge hollow crashing and grinding, Flandry heard bells from one of the many rose-red spires...or did a ship's bell ring among raking spars, or was it something he had heard in a dream once? Beneath all the noise, it was unutterably peaceful." (p. 323)

The sights and sounds merge with Flandry's imaginings. The sound of a bell from a sunken city recalls Ys. This sunset is simply the end of a day, not a symbol for the decline of Empire or the descent of man.

Approaching Nyanza

"The Game of Glory" (for reference, see here) tells us another of Flandry's hobbies. When he establishes radio contact with Nyanza:

"Most of him was listening to the fellow's accent. The inexhaustible variations on Anglic were a hobby of his." (p. 308)

How many planets does Poul Anderson describe as seen from space? Is this the best way to see a planet? Here is Nyanza:

"Nyanza shone before him, the clearest and most beautiful blue of his life, streaked with white cloud-belts and shuddering with great auroral streamers." (p. 307)

There are two moons. The fellow on the radio explains that there are:

no continents;
a medium-sized island, Altla;
rocks and reefs, "...submerged at double high tide, or even at Loa high." (p. 308)

Is Loa one of the moons? Is it named after the Loa? How many planets in the Technic History are mostly covered with water?

Scotha

Planet Stories, January 1951, contained:

"Witch of the Demon Seas" by A.A. Craig (Poul Anderson);
"Tiger by the Tail" by Poul Anderson.

The cover (see image) advertises the first of these two works, then adds "Also POUL ANDERSON"

In the revised text of "Tiger by the Tail," the barbarian, but newly industrialized, terrestroid planet, Scotha, sounds quaint:

modern industry, moved into space, has not been allowed to pollute the planetary environment;

there is no poisoned soil or polluted air or water;

there are no mines, highways or megalopolises;

population has been controlled;

there is extra-planetary colonization in artificial environments and in other systems;

there are three billion Scothani, two thirds off Scotha;

three small moons make the seas turbulent;

observing through instruments while approaching from space, Flandry sees -

green, in different shades from Terra;
broad forests;
rich plains, cultivated or grazed;
picturesque old villages;
steep-walled castles;
gleaming rivers and snow-peaks;
skies thronged with wings;
occasionally glimpsed sleek industrial buildings;
new towers in cities;
air traffic;
the ancient many-bannered stronghold of the Frithian kings on the peak of a mountain where a city now sprawls down the slopes and for kilometers beyond.

Catawrayannis

Catawrayannis on Llynathawr cannot compete either with Starfall on Hermes (and here) or with Zorkagrad on Dennitza (and here) but nevertheless impresses the reader as a real place:

the Governor's palace, big and pastel-tinted with domes and colonnades, is surrounded by gardens on its high hill;
below are terraced civil service buildings;
the wealthy live around the hill;
other dwellings blend into farms to the west and the city to the east;
the Luana River has low commercial towers on one side and slums on the other;
there is a haze and a cool spring breeze;
there are vehicles in the streets and the sky;
there are also peaceful trees - and a space warcraft passing overhead -

- a quiet environment and preparations for war.

It is also where James Ching eventually settled.

Talwin And Beringia

(Chalcolithic artifacts.)

On Talwin, most Ruadrath societies are chalcolithic. I have learned by googling this word.

Merseians studying the two intelligent species, Ruadrath and Domrath, on the planet Talwin in Poul Anderson's A Circus Of Hells resemble the Time Patrol studying the Paleo-Indians in Beringia in 13,211 B.C. in Anderson's The Shield Of Time. In both cases, the natives accept without question the sudden arrival of powerful strangers who, however, must not disrupt the natives' lives too much. Needless to say, Dominic Flandry on Talwin and Wanda Tamberly in Beringia find ways to be disruptive.

Return From Satan

Leaving the safety of the hurricane, Muddlin' Through rises slowly and rides a stratospheric current between the worst weather below and boiled-off vapors re-condensing into vast, sky-darkening, turbulent masses above. Her radar and other detectors penetrate the condensing masses as she approaches space. Anderson conveys that major natural events ceaselessly occur in Satan's cataclysmic environment and I have tried to re-convey this idea through succinct summaries.

Having disposed of nineteen pursuing robotic destroyers in the Satanic atmosphere, Muddlin' Through must fight three robotic cruisers orbiting incautiously close in inadvisably tight formation with attention directed outward, mistakenly expecting an attack from space. (Falkayn has not only utilized the turbulent planetary environment but also bluffed his enemy.)

While Muddlin' Through is still in the atmosphere, she fires three of her four nuclear missiles and destroys two of the cruisers. The third cruiser successfully deploys a counter-missile but is badly damaged by a near miss from Muddlin' Through's last torpedo. The damaged cruiser and the command battleship, now crewed by just one Shenn, retreat on hyperdrive. Muddlin' Through has won. She returns to space but stays near the planet with systems throttled down to conceal her continued existence from the retreating ships.

Return To Satan

Muddlin' Through returns to Satan where there are:

stormclouds;
lightnings;
crazy winds;
volcanoes;
avalanches;
floods;
mountainous ocean waves torn to spume;
air nearly solid with rain, hail and flung stones;
one immense convulsion where it seems no ship may descend.

Atmosphere strikes. The hull rings. Lightning explodes in darkness. Despite interior regulators, the deck pitches, yaws, falls and rises. Lights flicker. The computer, Muddlehead, keeps the ship in the safe region of a hurricane that is a dead spot in a continental storm driving half an ocean before it whereas the nineteen pursuing robot spacecraft, blown away like dead leaves, are variously:

bounced around and cast aside;
peeled open;
broken apart by meteroidal matter;
drowned;
tossed against mountains.

Muddlin' Through, using cloud cover, returns aloft to fight the attacking cruisers that will be unable to detect her in the electric noise.

Each new description of Satan is as fresh as the last.

Fire And Ice

Primordial Fire and Ice are equally, almost infinitely, present on Satan:

the spaceship, Muddlin' Through, pumps heat from her nuclear power plant into her landing jacks to counteract the cold of the planetary surface;

going EVA, Falkayn needs thick soles attached to his boots and cannot stay outside for long;

at the same time, the sheilding in his armor can protect him for only half an hour from the heat of Beta Crucis;

when Beta Crucis rises, his self-darkening faceplate goes almost black;

the combination of glare and protection from it handicaps his eyesight;

the lethal radiation level mounts rapidly;

Falkayn deploys a Geiger counter, a neutron-analysis spike and a sonic prose;

he is buried in an avalanche - but rescued by Muddlin' Through -  when an unstable dry ice glacier sublimes, the kind of catastrophe that we have come to expect for Anderson's space explorers, e.g., see "The Saturn Game."

When Falkayn names the planet Satan, he mentions that there is already a planet called Lucifer, which we encountered in "The Problem of Pain." When he explains to Chee Lan that Satan is an enemy of the divine and a source of evil, she starts to say that the divine itself is - and breaks off. The divine itself is the source of all things and therefore also the source of evil? She knows that, mythologically, there are anti-gods who can bestow wealth but that it is not a good idea to bargain with them. Will this be true of the planet Satan?

The Satanic Landscape

The spaceship, Muddlin' Through, circumnavigates Satan and descends:

Beta Crucis, four times the size of Sol seen from Earth, rages on the horizon;

the sky is incandescent;

roiling clouds are steaming white or gray and lightning-riven or black with volcano smoke;

glacial melt cascades from mountains;

terrible winds, rain, earthquakes and floods lash stony plains;

a tornado and gales blow away vapors that had covered half a continent;

giant icebergs clash;

atmospheric turbulance rocks the spaceship;

there are repeated shocks and a rising noise;

the computer pilots while Falkayn and Chee Lan wait to make decisions;

rising wind velocities are already over 500 kph;

heavy rain and frequent supersqualls bombard the antarctic;

the ship passes through thunder and wind-swept snow and lands just below the cold but quieter arctic circle.

I have tried, by summarizing Poul Anderson's narrative, to show that he describes a dynamic environment where major events occur without any interventions by intelligent beings. The description of Satan continues when we had thought that it was already complete.

Dark Satanic Mills

Ten years after passing Beta Crucis, Satan should have (many unknown, remember) calmed down:

it will no longer be illuminated any more than inhabited planets;

the cold, exposed rocks will have absorbed any excess heat that has not been re-radiated;

temperature will be tolerable and decreasing steadily though not rapidly;

 industry will be able to build;

heat output will be balanced with loss;

the atmosphere will be poisonous and most jobs will be automated so radioactive waste will be unproblematic;

the surface will be warm, lit by stars and lamps;

radio beacons will guide cargo shuttles;

there will be nuclear conversion units everywhere;

tons of formerly rare materials will be exported daily;

hopefully, SSL will monopolize the sale of franchises;

there will be both great wealth and great war potential as later with Mirkheim which Falkayn will seek, find and not hand over to van Rijn.

The Transformation Of Satan

This post follows Too Many Unknowns and Too Many Unknowns II.

Another unexpected feature of the rogue planet, Satan: although most of its natural radioactivity has gone and the surface temperature is close to absolute zero, the magnetic field indicates that part of the core remains molten. This heat, insulated by mantle, crust and cryosphere, dissipates slowly.

The planet is lit by:

light from Beta Crucis, refracted through the atmosphere;
corona;
auroras;
atoms and ions from sun-split molecules recombining;
lightning reflected by clouds;
volcanoes.

The cyrosphere dissolves;
glaciers become torrents;
torrents boil, becoming stormwinds;
lakes and seas melt;
global pressures shift;
isostatic balance is upset;
released energy melts rocks;
land quakes;
thousands of volcanoes start;
geysers spout;
there are blizzards, hail, rain and mounting tempests.

Anderson compares it to Ragnarok.

Too Many Unknowns II

When Satan passes Beta Crucis:

"'...maximum atmospheric instability will occur after periastron passage.'" (Chapter XI, p. 438) (For full reference, see here.)

While the planet approaches the star, fusion, vaporization etc absorb most of the stellar energy. However, energy input will continue when absorption is complete. Temperatures will soar and storms of great magnitude will prevent landing but ground observation remains feasible during the approach.

More counterintuitivity.

Too Many Unknowns

(This cover is appropriate because it shows clouds - I thought.)

When the rogue planet, Satan, swings around the blue giant star, Beta Crucis, approaching as close as 0.93 astronomical units, it will heat up. Sure. However, it is not yet clear whether surface conditions will become suitable for an industrial base:

"'The amount and the composition of frozen material could not have been measured accurately. Nor could its behavior have been computed beforehand in sufficient detail. The problem is too complex, with too many unknowns. For example, once a gaseous atmosphere has begun to form, other volatile substances will tend to recondense at high altitudes, forming clouds which will in time disappear but which, during their existence, may reflect so much input radiation that most of the surface remains comparatively cold.'" (Chapter XI, p. 437) (For full reference, see here.)

The surface might remain cold. How about that, then?

Adzel's Home Planet

Poul Anderson, Satan's World IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 329-598, Chapter VIII.

Most Wodenites are "...primitive hunters..." (p. 414) Few leave their planet. Adzel's memories of home are not of a civilization:

wide prairies of Zatlakh;
hoof beats like earthquakes;
wind from ghost-blue mountains on the horizon;
night time fires beneath the aurora;
old songs, dances and kinship. (p. 417)

Adzel has done well to adjust so completely to a technological civilization.

Eridanus

Chee Lan's home planet, Lifehome-under-Sky/Cynthia, is O2 Eridani A II. I think that "Eridani A II" would mean "the second planet of the first star in the constellation, Eridanus" but I do not know what the "O2" means. (That is meant to be a small 2 to the lower right of the O.)

Googling "Eridanus," I learned that:

there is an Eridanus supervoid;

filaments of gravitationally bound galaxies are the largest known structures in the universe and form the boundaries of voids.

I did not know any of that.

Poul Anderson speculated about trans-galactic cosmic structures in Tau Zero and World Without Stars. See here. But he did not know about filaments or voids.

Moving Planets

"Men can alter a world, or ruin one; but they cannot move it one centimeter off its ordained course. That requires energies of literally cosmic magnitude.
"So you couldn't ease this planet into a suitable orbit around Beta Crucis. It must continue its endless wanderings."
-Poul Anderson, Satan's World IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 329-598 AT p. 357.

Would gravity control not allow the moving of planets? In James Blish's Cities In Flight, men move a planet between galaxies faster than light with graviton polarity generators. In Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker, the telepathic galactic mind launches a star cluster between galaxies.

Satan, the planet passing close to Beta Crucis, is a rogue. It seems that Anderson is correct when he tells us that there are many such planets. Satan's cryosphere becomes atmosphere and hydrosphere at periastron passage but re-forms during recession.

"'Nothing basic would have happened.'"
-op. cit., p. 356.

- except that the planet can be put to massive industrial use while it is energized. Satan and Mirkheim are two amazing creations by Anderson and the latter idea was suggested by his editor, John W. Campbell.

London And Luna

In Flandry And Leamas, we compared Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry with John le Carre's Alec Leamas. Now we find a lesser parallel between Anderson's David Falkayn and Leamas.

Both London and Luna are in the cosmos although we do do not think of London as a "cosmic environment."

In London, to evade any followers, Leamas:

suddenly jumps on a bus to Ludgate Hill;
dismounts in a traffic jam;
catches a tube;
stands in the end carriage;
alights at the next station;
catches another train to Euston;
goes back to Charing Cross, where a van waits in the forecourt.

On Luna, to evade any followers, Falkayn:

passes through a large sporting goods store;
walks behind large items;
leaves by a rear door;
finds a kiosk;
enters the antigrav dropshaft;
gets off at the eighth sublevel;
proceeds along the corridors to his destination.

In one of his novels, Frederick Forsyth explains how a trained team can follow anyone without being spotted and not lose him. Anyone who turns a corner, runs to the next corner and looks back merely alerts the team that he thinks he might be followed.

On The Planet Lucifer II

See On The Planet Lucifer.

Quetlan and Laura, the suns of Ythri and Avalon respectively, are in the constellation Lupus.

Coya, astrophysicist and frequent space traveler, is at home in the universe, able to identify the brightest stars among the rest. The Dewfall has traveled at high speed for nearly a month from Quetlan towards the Deneb sector. Since Quetlan is 278 light years from Sol towards Lupus, they are now a hundred parsecs from Earth in unknown space. Coya knows this. To that extent, she is as at home there as a Londoner is in Hyde Park. The universe is our home and we ought to be one with it.
-copied from here.

We first read of Avalon in Hloch's Introduction to "The Problem of Pain," then in a conversation on Lucifer:

The planet Lucifer is inhospitable but might be marginally habitable and has mineral wealth. Both days and nights are long, storms are frequent, there is no green vegetation and the violent blue sun continually disrupts electronics. A uranium-concentrating root causes a unique ecological cycle in one area.
-copied from here.

I am rereading the relevant passages of "The Problem of Pain" for any more information about Lucifer. The narrator tells us that the planet is well named. However, if it proves to be even marginally habitable, then its mineral wealth will be worth exploiting. The exploratory team must determine whether the survival problems can be solved economically. Furious day-time weather ends in a twilight gale. Storms blow dust. The air is thin. Auroras flame. Frost covers the land and glittering ice sheathes twisted "trees."

When, in the concluding sentence, the sun rises from the burning horizon, I think that this is an appropriate pathetic fallacy for the theme of the story. See here.

Unusual Iapetus

In Poul Anderson's "The Saturn Game," less than a thousand years ago, a comet swung round Saturn and struck Iapetus, covering one hemisphere with ice, including the "City of Ice" glacier composed of the differently colored ices of diverse materials, water, ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide etc. Landing meteorites collect solar heat and melt their surroundings. The properties of the different ices produce not smooth craters but fantastic concavities. Anderson goes into more detail than I can summarize here.

The upshot is that this Saturnian moon becomes yet another of Poul Anderson's "Unusual Heavenly Bodies." See here.