Tom, tall, thin, wearing a scaly leather tunic and carrying knife, rifle and backpack, is accompanied by a six-legged "cynopard" with fur of the same bluish green as the local leaves. Peering, listening and smelling, Tom senses something wrong and leads the cynopard in a particular direction.
Having following a peacock moth off the trail, Edmund Wylie has become lost and separated from his party. He is a settler on Arcadia, a planet of Epsilon Eridani, eleven light years from Earth. The journey from Earth had involved decades in suspended animation, as in both the Rustum and the Directorate future histories. However, in its history, Rustum, twenty light years from Earth, is the nearest habitable extra-solar planet whereas, in the Directorate history, Mithras, thirty three light years away, is so far the only habitable planet to be found within a radius of under fifty light years. On the other hand, at the time when the base on Mithras is being terminated, less than half the stars within that radius have been visited. Thus, Arcadia, although nearer, might have been found later.
Settlers on Arcadia have introduced squirrels and other animals and talk of somehow cooperating with nature which is where the Faun will come into the picture. Cooperation with nature sounds like an improvement on the losing war against a hostile environment that human beings were obliged to wage on Sibylla.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I noted how "The Faun" was one of the stories Anderson wrote for BOYS LIFE, the magazine of the Boy Scouts of America. Another being "The Season of Forgiveness." They feature boys as protagonists who prove to their elders how they too can solve problems.
I agree, the sun of Arcadia, despite being so much nearer Earth than Mithras, did not mean it had to be discovered to have a terrestroid planet sooner than Mithras.
Sean
Post a Comment