Approaching Hermes

OK. Immediately following the Pacific sunset, there is another colorful descriptive paragraph. Approached from space, David Falkayn's home planet, Hermes, is first a blue star, then a sapphire disc which:

is "...marbeled with white weather..." (Chapter XV, p. 205) but darkened by its single large continent, Greatland;

shows shining seas, either brightened by the sun, Maia, or shimmering under the two moons, Caduceus and Sandalion.

Poul Anderson could just have told us how the trade pioneer crew makes its clandestine approach to the occupied planet but, of course, he rightly tells us what the planet looks like first. And that really is the end of the day on this part of the planet Earth.