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.
3 comments:
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
"did not mean it had to be discovered to have a terrestroid planet sooner than Mithras."
That seems unlikely to me.
We will have space telescopes much better than anything we have in space now, *long* before we have the capability for interstellar space probes. We will know about the existence of any terrestroid planets (in the sense of having oceans of liquid water, and oxygen rich atmospheres), long before we can visit them.
Exploration of such worlds with space craft at STL speeds will occur in order of distance from Earth.
Kaor, Jim!
I agree, but Anderson wrote stories like "The Faun" and "Home" long before the technology you described started becoming practical with things like the James Webb Space Telescope. He couldn't predict when or whether such new instrumentalities would come into use.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment