Four-Day Planet | Page 2

that I did not keep
you waiting." Then he saw me. "Why, it's Walter Boyd. How is your
father, Walter?"
I assured him as to Dad's health and inquired about his own, and then
asked him how things were going at school. As well as could be
expected, he told me, and I gathered that he kept his point of
expectation safely low. Then he wanted to know if I were going aboard
to interview Mr. Murell.
"Really, Walter, it is a wonderful thing that a famous author like Mr.
Murell should come here to write a book about our planet," he told me,
very seriously, and added, as an afterthought: "Have you any idea
where he intends staying while he is among us?"
"Why, yes," I admitted. "After the Peenemünde radioed us their
passenger list, Dad talked to him by screen, and invited him to stay
with us. Mr. Murell accepted, at least until he can find quarters of his
own."

There are a lot of good poker players in Port Sandor, but Professor Jan
Hartzenbosch is not one of them. The look of disappointment would
have been comical if it hadn't been so utterly pathetic. He'd been
hoping to lasso Murell himself.
"I wonder if Mr. Murell could spare time to come to the school and
speak to the students," he said, after a moment.
"I'm sure he could. I'll mention it to him, Professor," I promised.
Professor Hartzenbosch bridled at that. The great author ought to be
coming to his school out of respect for him, not because a
seventeen-year-old cub reporter sent him. But then, Professor
Hartzenbosch always took the attitude that he was conferring a favor on
the Times when he had anything he wanted publicity on.
The elevator door opened, and Lautier and the professor joined in the
push to get into it. I hung back, deciding to wait for the next one so that
I could get in first and get back to the rear, where my hamper wouldn't
be in people's way. After a while, it came back empty and I got on, and
when the crowd pushed off on the top level, I put my hamper back on
contragravity and towed it out into the outdoor air, which by this time
had gotten almost as cool as a bake-oven.
I looked up at the sky, where everybody else was looking. The
Peenemünde wasn't visible; it was still a few thousand miles off-planet.
Big ragged clouds were still blowing in from the west, very high, and
the sunset was even brighter and redder than when I had seen it last, ten
hours before. It was now about 1630.
Now, before anybody starts asking just who's crazy, let me point out
that this is not on Terra, nor on Baldur nor Thor nor Odin nor Freya,
nor any other rational planet. This is Fenris, and on Fenris the sunsets,
like many other things, are somewhat peculiar.
Fenris is the second planet of a G{4} star, six hundred and fifty
light-years to the Galactic southwest of the Sol System. Everything else
equal, it should have been pretty much Terra type; closer to a cooler

primary and getting about the same amount of radiation. At least, that's
what the book says. I was born on Fenris, and have never been off it in
the seventeen years since.
Everything else, however, is not equal. The Fenris year is a trifle
shorter than the Terran year we use for Atomic Era dating, eight
thousand and a few odd Galactic Standard hours. In that time, Fenris
makes almost exactly four axial rotations. This means that on one side
the sun is continuously in the sky for a thousand hours, pouring down
unceasing heat, while the other side is in shadow. You sleep eight hours,
and when you get up and go outside--in an insulated vehicle, or an
extreme-environment suit--you find that the shadows have moved only
an inch or so, and it's that much hotter. Finally, the sun crawls down to
the horizon and hangs there for a few days--periods of twenty-four G.S.
hours--and then slides slowly out of sight. Then, for about a hundred
hours, there is a beautiful unfading sunset, and it's really pleasant
outdoors. Then it gets darker and colder until, just before sunrise, it
gets almost cold enough to freeze CO{2}. Then the sun comes up, and
we begin all over again.
You are picking up the impression, I trust, that as planets go, Fenris is
nobody's bargain. It isn't a real hell-planet, and spacemen haven't made
a swear word out of its name, as they have with the name of
fluorine-atmosphere Nifflheim, but even the Reverend Hiram Zilker,
the Orthodox-Monophysite preacher, admits that it's one of those
planets the Creator must have gotten a trifle