Another star passing near Siekh skews its planets' orbits. The planet Talwin's distance from Siekh varies from 0.87 to 2.62 astronomical units. Huge ice caps form and melt each twice Terran year. There are floods and rain storms. One intelligent race hibernates in caves. Another estivates at sea. They do not meet.
-copied from here.
Talwin is described in more detail here. It is one of several planets to have an equivalent of grass. See here. (Starkad, recently revisited, has been added to this list.) Flandry revisits Talwin more than once. See here.
Talwin is one planet where Flandry briefly works with Merseians to study a third intelligent species. The universe is big enough that there are places in it where human beings and Merseians can coexist without being involved in the machinations of their respective imperialisms. But Flandry has to get back to where he belongs.
Talwin becomes nominally a joint scientific base, in practice a place where high ranking representatives of the two realms are able to meet for discrete negotiations, especially during the Terran civil war when the Merseians need to sound out which of the rival claimants is likely to become the new Emperor.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And Talwin became a joint Merseian/Terran scientific base AFTER Flandry had neutralized its value to Merseia as a place from which to conduct espionage activities against the Empire. Ydwyr the Seeker primarily meant Talwin as a scientific base, but could not get the necessary funding, despite his influential family connections, till it also became an espionage base. By getting some funding from the Imperium, Flandry both saved the base and prevented it from again getting used for espionage against the Empire.
Sean
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