Poul Anderson, "Terminal Quest" IN Anderson, Alight In The Void (New York, August 1993), pp. 1-28.
See:
In fact, just read or reread that previous post. It contains more information about this story than I had expected it to.
Here is another intelligent, two-armed quadruped whose planet has been colonized by "Strangers" who turn out to be human beings but this story has a different ending which is prefigured by the title.
What did we miss while discussing "Strangers"? Human beings are "Night Folk" because the sunlight on the colonized planet is lethal to them so that they must spend daylight hours inside shuttered buildings or venture out only when completely covered up.
After "Terminal Quest," we might return to All One Universe and reread some other pieces in that collection.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I don't think the humans we see in "Strangers" thought of themselves as being colonists. The planet of that story is so limiting and unsatisfactory for our race. Daylight is lethally dangerous, with only night time hours being safe for them. And so on and on.
I think these humans were stranded on this planet, that they had no choice but to live there. Something must have gone wrong with their spaceship, either destroyed or so badly damaged that it was unusable.
Heck, I might even place "Strangers" in the STARFARERS timeline, that these humans once belonged to a Kith ship.
Ad astra! Sean
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