Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 5: November 2013 by Mike Resnick;Jack Dann;Sabina Theo;Andrea G. Stewart;Catherine Asaro;Eric Cline;David Brin;Alavaro Zinos-Amaro;Kevin J. Anderson;Martin L. Shoemaker;Larry Niven;Andre Norton;Barry Malzberg;Gregory Benford;Paul Cook

Author:Mike Resnick;Jack Dann;Sabina Theo;Andrea G. Stewart;Catherine Asaro;Eric Cline;David Brin;Alavaro Zinos-Amaro;Kevin J. Anderson;Martin L. Shoemaker;Larry Niven;Andre Norton;Barry Malzberg;Gregory Benford;Paul Cook [Cook, Mike Resnick;Jack Dann;Sabina Theo;Andrea G. Stewart;Catherine Asaro;Eric Cline;David Brin;Alavaro Zinos-Amaro;Kevin J. Anderson;Martin L. Shoemaker;Larry Niven;Andre Norton;Barry Malzberg;Gregory Benford;Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Darker Matter, strange horizons, Speculative Fiction, Lightspeed, Asimovs, Locus, Clarkesworld, Analog
Publisher: Phoenix Pick
Published: 2013-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

Original (First) Publication

Copyright © 2013 by Martin L. Shoemaker

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Larry Niven is an acknowledged giant in science fiction, a former Worldcon Guest of Honor, winner of the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Ditmar, and creator of such classics as Ringworld, The Mote in God’s Eye (with Jerry Pournelle), the Man-Kzin series, the Known Space series, the Heorot books, and much more.

FLARE TIME

by Larry Niven

If the starship’s arrival had done nothing else for Bronze Legs, this was enough: he was seeing the sky again.

For this past week the rammers had roamed through Touchdown City. The fifty-year-old colony was still small; everybody knew everybody. It was hard to get used to, this influx of oddly-accented strangers stumbling about with vacuous smiles and eyes wide with surprise and pleasure. Even the Medean humans were catching the habit. In his thirty-four earthyears of life Calvin “Bronze Legs” Miller had explored fifteen thousand square miles of the infinite variety that was Medea. Strange, that it took people from another world to make him look up.

Here was a pretty picture: sunset over the wild lands north of the colony. Peaks to the south were limned in bluish-white from the farmlands beyond, from the lamps that kept terrestrial plants growing. Everything else was red, infinite shades of red. To heatward a level horizon cut the great disk of Argo in half. You could feel the heat on your cheek, and watch sullenly glowing storms move in bands across the face of the red-hot superjovian world. To coldward, Phrixus and Helle were two glaring pink dots following each other down to the ridge. The Jet Stream stretched straight across the blue sky, a pinkish-white band of cloud from horizon to horizon. Thirty or forty multicolored balloons, linked in a cluster, were settling to graze a scum-covered rain pool in the valley below him.

Blue-tinged shadows pooled in the valley, and three human shapes moved through the red and orange vegetation. Bronze Legs recognized Lightning Harness and Grace Carpenter even at this distance. The third had a slightly hunchbacked look, and a metal headdress gleamed in her straight black hair. That would be Rachel Subramaniam’s memory-recording equipment. Her head kept snapping left and right, ever eager for new sights.

Bronze Legs grinned. He tried to imagine how this must look to a rammer, an offworlder; he succeeded only in remembering himself as a child. All this strangeness; all this red.

He turned the howler and continued uphill.

At the crest of the ridge a fux waited for him, the pinkish-white suns behind her. She was a black silhouette, four thin legs and two thin arms, a pointed face and a narrow torso bent in an L: a lean, mean centaur-shape.

As he topped the ridge and let the howler settle on its air cushion, the fux backed away several meters. Bronze Legs wondered why, then guessed the answer. It wasn’t the smell of him. Fuxes liked that. She was putting the ridge between herself and the white glare from Touchdown City’s farming lamps. She said, “I am Long Nose.