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.