Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Bruce Albrecht, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Transcriber's Note Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. On earth it was 2056 A.D. but on the red-green planet it was THE YEAR ONE _There were only six human beings_-- DR. CHRISTOPHER WRIGHT, anthropologist--he believed in man's basic goodness ... but could he put his trust in an alien race? PAUL MASON--he dutifully shared his wife with his best friend. DOROTHY LEEDS--Paul was her husband, but she knew there were some things more important than love. SEARS OLIPHANT--the gentle scientist who inspired love in an alien. ANN BRYAN--the youngest of them all, she had to be taught violence and passion. EDMUND SPEARMAN--the rebel who had to have his own tribe to rule ... even though it meant war with his Earth companions. _Six humans alone against the deadly forces of a strange and distant planet._ * * * * * WEST OF THE SUN EDGAR PANGBORN * * * * * To Mary C. Pangborn * * * * * Contents PART ONE _A.D. 2056_ 9 PART TWO _The Year One_ 77 PART THREE _The Year Ten_ 161 * * * * * Part One A.D. 2056 1 Morning was flowing over the red-green planet. "What do we know?" The delicate brown face of Dorothy Leeds kindled with questions. "Summarize it." Edmund Spearman achieved casualness. "Diameter and mass a trifle more than Earth's, larger orbit around a larger sun. A year of 458 days, twenty-six hours each. Moderate seasonal changes, axial tilt less than Earth's, orbit less elliptical. See the smallness of the north polar ice cap? The equatorial region--much too hot; the rest is subtropical to temperate. We should go down (if we do) near the 50th parallel--north, I'd say. Too much desert in the southern hemisphere. Might be hot winds, sandstorms." "The red-green _is_ vegetation?" Dr. Christopher Wright teetered on long legs before the screen, a classroom mannerism unchanged by eleven years in the wilderness of space. He pinched and pulled the skin on his Adam's apple, his hawk's-beak, small-chinned head jutting forward with an awkwardness not aggressive but intent. Paul Mason thought: _You love him or hate him. In either case he's never quite grotesque._ Wright's too-soft voice insisted: "It _is_, of course?"