Poul Anderson by The Long Night

Author:The Long Night
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-11-24T12:34:30+00:00

A couple of horses drew a haycutter. It also was wooden; even the revolving blades were simply edged with metal. From its creaking and bouncing, the machine had neither wheel bearings nor springs. A man drove it. Two half-grown boys, belike his sons, walked after. They used wooden-tined rakes to order the windrows. The people, like the animals, were of long slim deep-chested build, brown-haired and fair-complexioned. Their garments were coarsely woven smock and trousers.

No weapons showed, which suggested that the bay region was free of bandits and vendattas.

Nevertheless Dagny did not approach. Instead, she led a cautious way back into the woods and thence toward the house, so that the buildings screened off view of the hayfield.

The Ki-akener woman scowled. “Why?” she muttered.

“Why what … my lady?”

“Why make—” Dagny’s hands imitated whirling blades. “Here. Planet … canted? … little. No cold?”

“Oh. Do you mean, why do they bother making hay? Well, there must be times when their livestock can’t pasture.”

Dagny understood. Her nod was brusque. “Why that ?”

“Um-m-m … oh, dear, let me think. Lord Tom explained to me what he—what you two had learned about this planet. Yes. Not much axial tilt. I suppose not an unusually eccentric orbit. So the seasons oughtn’t to be very marked. And we are in a rather low latitude any-way, on a seacoast at that. It should never get too cold for grass. Too dry? No, this is midsummer time. And, well, they’d hardly export hay to other areas, would they?”

Dagny shrugged.

It is such a strange world, Yasmin thought. All wrong. Too dense. That is, if it had a great many heavy metals, humans would never have settled here permanently. So what makes it dense should be a core of iron, nickel and things, squeezed into compact quantum states. The kind that terrestroid planets normally have. Yes, and the formation of a true core causes tectonic processes, vul-canism, the outgassing of a primitive atmosphere and water. Later we get chemical evolution, life, photo-synthesis, free oxygen But Nike is too small for that! It’s Mars type. We have a Mars type planet in our own system—oh, lost and loved star that shines upon Sassania—and it’s got a bare wisp of unbreathable air. Professor Nasruddin explained to us. If a world is small, it has weak gravity. So the differential migration of elements down toward the center, that builds a distinct core, is too slow. So few gas molecules get unlocked from mineral combination by heat …. Nike isn’t possible!

(How suddenly, shockingly real came back to her the lecture hall, and the droning voice, young heads bent above notebooks, sunlight that streamed in through arched windows, and the buzz of bees, odor of roses, a glimpse of students strolling across a greensward that stretched between beautiful buildings.) Dagny’s fingers clamped about Yasmin’s arm. “Heed! Fool!”

Yasmin started from her reverie. They were almost at the house. “Heavens! I’m sorry.”

“Talk well.” Dagny’s voice was bleak with doubt of her.

Yasmin swallowed and stepped forth into the yard. She felt dizzy.

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