Pharaoh

Benoni Strang's workers on Babur have a secret base on a Baburite moon. The Baburites' oxygen-breathing mercenary army get a whole planet which they know as Pharaoh.

About a million human, Gorzuni, Merseian and Donarrian mercenaries occupy Hermes with a comparable number held in reserve. Recruited in many places on dozens of planets, either they did not register on anyone's statistics or, if some League company did notice, it did not inform anyone else.

"Space is too big, and we too divided."
-Poul Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2011), p. 220.

Isolated for years of training and preparation on Pharaoh, the soldiers have accumulating pay, beer halls, brothels, a multi-sensory library and a hot, wet, barely terrestroid, permanently clouded, planetary environment to explore. The clouds prevent them from learning where Pharaoh is. Falkayn thinks that it is more likely to be inside known space. Outside, it could be discovered by explorers, who continually expand known space. Inside, it might already have been explored once but dismissed as of no interest.

Learning that they are working for Babur against the Solar Commonwealth does not demoralize highly disciplined mercs who were recruited precisely because they were already alienated from Technic civilization.

Ayisha

Ayisha, a Luna-sized Baburite moon, has a dimly lit, airless, cratered, stone surface and a black sky showing unwinking stars and the amber planet with its bands of white, ocher and cinnabar clouds.

On Ayisha's surface, the domes of a secret project hold:

heat;
Terrestrial gravity;
breathable air;
grass;
bushes;
flowers;
a ball court;
fountains;
a swimming pool;
good food and wine;
a handicraft shop;
an amateur theater;
a vice section.

Staff spend a significant part of their lives in the system, have no leaves and receive no visitors and their mail is censored although good pay accumulates at home. Anyone who resigns has their memory wiped. What this shows is that people with technology can master hostile environments while retaining discreditable motives. The motto of Lancaster University is patet veritas omnibus, "truth lies open to all." However, in the future of the Technic History, scientific accomplishment is still accompanied by commercial and political secrecy.

The Mystery Of Mirkheim

The following propositions are facts within Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization:

planetary systems do not condense around giant stars;

Beta Centauri is a giant star with planets because, while it was condensing, its nebula retarded, then captured, a group of rogue planets;

van Rijn says somewhere that scientists are still trying to figure out how the red giant Betelgeuse has planets;

Mirkheim was a planet of fifteen hundred Terrestrial masses orbiting a star as bright as a hundred Sols.

So how did Mirkheim exist? We are told how it was found:

"From the known distribution of former supernovae, together with data on other star types, dust, gas, radiation, magnetism, present location and concentrations, the time derivatives of these quantities: using well-established theories of galactic development, it is possible to compute with reasonable probability the distribution of undiscovered dark giants within a radius of a few hundred parsecs....The most you can learn is the likelihood (not the certainty) of a given type of object existing within such-and-such a distance of yourself, and the likeliest (not the indubitable) direction."
-Poul Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (New York, 2010), p. 653.

But the "...given type of object..." has to be possible, however improbable, in the first place. Surely Astrocenter would not have been able to compute the probability of a condensing giant star capturing several rogue planets? So how was Mirkheim's probability computed?

A Few More Details About Hermes

(This may be the last post for December although I am not sure yet. We have just returned from a solstice ritual.)

Hermetian trees include stonebark and rainroof.
Ornithoids and buzzbugs fly between them.
One flying predator is called a steelwing.
Athena Falkayn wears "...a necklace of fallaron amber." (Rise Of The Terran Empire, p. 216)
The Falkayn manor house derives its name from the nearby Hornbeck brook.
Wyvernflies fly above the brook.
Terrestrial food and drink taste odd to Hermetians so no doubt the reverse would be true.

Sandra Tamarin flies near the Palomino River as it crosses an agrarian property of the Runeberg domain. She sees red-tiled houses of Follower families and the Runeberg mansion which, she knows, contains ancestral portraits and long tradition.

The Insignia Room, its walls decorated only by the colorful devices of the thousand Kindred, is on a high floor with  a view of sky and distant ocean. Grand Duchess Sandra sits at her desk before a three dimensional communication screen occupying half a wall and displaying the image of a hydrogen-breathing Baburite conqueror in his ship in synchronous orbit above Starfall.

The theme of Mirkheim is that times change. They can hardly change more than this.

Valya

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 19 Dec 2014:

The terrestroid planet Valya, close to its dwarf sun, Elena, has:

a forty plus hour day;
a calm ocean;
land covered by russet shrubs and turf;
tiny flyers, not insects;
long-limbed, spindly, blue-furred, mountain-dwelling, dancing, bronze-age natives with antennae on pointed heads and a strange grammar of personal pronouns;
a rich deposit of gold.

Gold attracts Stellar Metals. Bronze age natives are unable to resist extra-planetary invasion. Like Tametha, another atrocity committed by a League company.

Babur

The sub-Jovian planet Babur:

is more than six a.u.'s from its sun, Mogul (more than six times as bright as Sol);
is twelve and a third times as massive as Earth and two and four-fifths times as large;
has -
four moons,
a hydrogen/helium atmosphere,
red clouds in a purple sky,
eight times the Terrestrial surface, most of it land because ammonia is less plentiful than water,
large arid continents,
ice mountains,
melting volcanoes,
black vegetation,
hot underground ice that explodes with changes of pressure, causing some lands to sink beneath the ammonia seas while others emerge as yet lifeless,
a three-sexed, sex-changing, four-eyed, octopedal dominant species, living in buildings of ice.

Each Baburite "Band" is an association of beings united but not subordinated into a single personality by what might be telepathy with traditions neither oral nor written but perceived. Bands recruit by reproduction and adoption. The Imperial Band of Sisema leads a united planet without a government. 

The Surface Of Mirkheim

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 20 June 2013.

Mirkheim, the supermetal-coated remnant of a giant planet of a massive star that went supernova, is unlit by any sun so might resemble a rogue planet except that its surface is:

not covered by dust or frozen atmosphere;

 
not cratered;

metallic, hard, blank, dimly shining, almost mirror-like;

in some places, fantastically ridged and corrugated by congealed moltenness;

with five Terrestrial gravities and enough radioactivity to kill in weeks.

Rogue planets, which feature in more than one work by Anderson, are sunless because they move through interstellar space. Mirkheim, which appears in a short story and a novel, is sunless because its sun exploded a long time ago. Sunlessness suggests sameness but Anderson takes the trouble to imagine the differences, as summarized above.

Shortly before Sandra Tamarin visits Mirkheim, David Falkayn has visited the sub-Jovian Babur. Thus, although Anderson describes many beautiful humanly colonized planets like Hermes, Avalon and Dennitza, he also envisages planetary surfaces that are as inhospitable as space itself and also shows us what his characters see when they explore such places.

Living beings venture to Mirkheim not to live there but to mine the supermetals which are so valuable that a war is fought over them.

An Inhabited Mirkheim!

Originally published on Poul Anderson Appreciation, 3 Dec 2013.

In Poul Anderson's and Gordon R Dickson's Hoka (New York, 1985), a nearby supernova blew away the atmosphere of a superjovian planet and covered its solidified core with heavy elements, including radioactives. This is familiar Anderson territory, a cosmic accident with an unlikely but nevertheless possible outcome.

It is also the planet Mirkheim revisited but with one big difference: life, taking energy from local radioactive material "...rather than the feeble red sun." (p. 174) Animals eat isotopes concentrated by plants. A Brobingnagian (for such is the human name of the planet) does not oxidize organic materials, "...like most creatures in known space..." (ibid.), but fissions nuclei and is correspondingly strong.

His internal processes produce little radiation which is, in any case, absorbed by his stomach but he must take precautions when disposing of body wastes. Brobdingnagians, evolved on an airless planet, have neither nose nor ears and instead communicate by transmitting and receiving vibrations through the ground via tympani on their meter-long feet. The large round head and body are covered by blue fur and the brown eyes are bone dry.

How much of this is serious scientific speculation and how much is comical exaggeration in keeping with the comedy of the rest of the Hoka series? 

Hermes

Originally published on Poul Anderson Appreciation, 21 April 2012.

The planet Hermes:

is in the system of the star Maia in Sector Antares;

has 97% G;

has two moons, Caduceus and Sandalion;

has one large continent, Greatland, with an arid interior;

was colonized early mainly by northern Europeans;

was developed by private corporations which became the basis of the Hermetian state;

began as a Grand Duchy with a stratified society;

gained stewardship of the industrially valuable planet Mirkheim after the Babur War;

at that time also became an ordinary crowned republic while remaining nominally a Grand Duchy;

during the Troubles, developed a military-oriented society with authority concentrated in the executive and rule by whoever commanded the greatest armed force;

lost Mirkheim when Hans Molitor became Emperor;

rioted against forced demilitarization under Molitor and was pacified by the Marines;

prospered under Grand Duke Edwin Cairncross who reclaimed the interior with canals, landscaping, imported species, urbanization, commerce and a castle on an extinct volcano.

Greatland divides the Auroral Ocean to the east from the Corybantic Ocean to the west. The city of Starfall is on the east coast where the Palomino River flows into Daybreak Bay. Tilirras sing from millionleafs and there are colorfully winged, trilling nidifexes.

When Hermes declared independence from Terra, its new constitution recognized the Kindred as the Thousand Families controlling the "domains": either landed estates or corporations. The presidents of the domains elect the Duke or Duchess of Hermes from the Tamarin family which must not own a domain. Ancestors of Kindred and Tamarins were the first to arrive from Earth but, instead of founding a corporation, the Tamarins free lanced as scientists etc. "Followers," holding entailed shares, are junior partners in domains, each holding a single vote in domain affairs whereas Kindred have ten. "Travers," hirelings or unaffiliated business people, descended from latecomers, are not taxed and have no vote. The Liberation Front demands full rights for Travers who, as a result of "Libby" campaigns, gain a vote in choosing municipal officers. Travers bow to the Duchess, Followers salute, Kindred shake hands.

The Asmundsens, Followers of the Runebergs and tenants on the Brightwater estate, manage the Runeberg's copper industry. A younger Asmundsen, who explores and develops other planets in the Maian system, is obliged by custom to give preferential promotions to fellow Followers but acknowledges that his strike-threatening Traver employees have legitimate grievances which he tries to address by negotiating in person with their leaders and offering compensations like extra vacations. Hornbeck, the estate of the Falkayn domain, is on a plateau jutting from Mount Nevis in the Thunderhead Mountains. Sam Romney, independent ship-owner, fisherman and loyal Traver, does most of his business with the Falkayns. 

Baburite invaders appoint Benoni Strang, an embittered Traver, as High Commissioner for Hermes. Strang, as Bayard Story of the Galactic Developments company and the Seven in Space cartel, had secretly armed Babur. As Commissioner, he intends to impose a social revolution, democratizing the domains and obliging them to conduct all operations through a central trade authority. Through Duchess Sandra Tamarin-Asmundsen, he announces that a Grand Assembly to draft a new constitution, as provided for in the existing constitution, will be held when procedures for the election of delegates are in place. Christa Broderick, the Liberation Front leader welcomes Strang's proposed social reforms but Strang bypasses the Front, many of whom oppose the invasion, and his Traver supporters form a new party.

Broderick's city and farming Followers snipe and sabotage while guerrillas operate in the Arcadian Hills and the Thunderheads. Both groups attack Starfall while the returned Ducal Space Navy engages orbiting Baburite craft. After the liberation, the Duchess receives a petition. Revolutionary terror has weakened the domains and the Liberation Front has gained confidence. It is agreed that a constitutional convention must await a firm peace but then Hermes, while remaining nominally a duchy, will become in practice a republic. Later, Cairncross is not a Tamarin though he is remotely descended from the Founder of the Empire, Manuel Argos.

Hermes, like Avalon, Aeneas and Vixen, is an entire inhabited planet imagined in detail by Poul Anderson.

Sources: Mirkheim and A Stone In Heaven.