Professor Hartzenbosch bridled at that. The great author ought to be
coming to his school out of respect for him, not because a
seventeen-year-old cub reporter sent him. But then, Professor
Hartzenbosch always took the attitude that he was conferring a favor
on the _Times_ when he had anything he wanted publicity on.
The elevator door opened, and Lautier and the professor joined in the
push to get into it. I hung back, deciding to wait for the next one so
that I could get in first and get back to the rear, where my hamper
wouldn't be in people's way. After a while, it came back empty and I
got on, and when the crowd pushed off on the top level, I put my
hamper back on contragravity and towed it out into the outdoor air,
which by this time had gotten almost as cool as a bake-oven.
I looked up at the sky, where everybody else was looking. The
_Peenemünde_ wasn't visible; it was still a few thousand miles
off-planet. Big ragged clouds were still blowing in from the west,
very high, and the sunset was even brighter and redder than when I had
seen it last, ten hours before. It was now about 1630.
Now, before anybody starts asking just who's crazy, let me point out
that this is not on Terra, nor on Baldur nor Thor nor Odin nor Freya,
nor any other rational planet. This is Fenris, and on Fenris the
sunsets, like many other things, are somewhat peculiar.
Fenris is the second planet of a G_{4} star, six hundred and fifty
light-years to the Galactic southwest of the Sol System. Everything
else equal, it should have been pretty much Terra type; closer to a
cooler primary and getting about the same amount of radiation. At
least, that's what the book says. I was born on Fenris, and have never
been off it in the seventeen years since.
Everything else, however, is not equal. The Fenris year is a trifle
shorter than the Terran year we use for Atomic Era dating, eight
thousand and a few odd Galactic Standard hours. In that time, Fenris
makes almost exactly four axial rotations. This means that on one side
the sun is continuously in the sky for a thousand hours, pouring down
unceasing heat, while the other side is in shadow. You sleep eight
hours, and when you get up and go outside--in an insulated vehicle, or
an extreme-environment suit--you find that the shadows have moved only
an inch or so, and it's that much hotter. Finally, the sun crawls down
to the horizon and hangs there for a few days--periods of twenty-four
G.S. hours--and then slides slowly out of sight. Then, for about a
hundred hours, there is a beautiful unfading sunset, and it's really
pleasant outdoors. Then it gets darker and colder until, just before
sunrise, it gets almost cold enough to freeze CO_{2}. Then the sun
comes up, and we begin all over again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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