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.
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