Uller Uprising | Page 4

unless it is eaten first. What with the quartz-speckled hides of the living vegetation and the solid quartz of the dead, a forest is spectacular.
The silicone animals live on the plants. They chew them up, dehydrate them, and convert their silicious outer bark and carbonaceous interiors into silicones for themselves. When silicone tissue is metabolized, the carbon and hydrogen go to CO-{2} and H-{2}O, which are breathed out, while the silicone goes into SiO-{2}, which is deposited as more teeth and armor. (Compare the terrestrial octopus, which makes armor-plating out of calcium urate instead of excreting urea or uric acid.) The animals can, of course, eat each other too, or make a meal of the small carbonaceous animals of the equatorial seas.
Further note that the animals cannot digest plants when they are cold. They can eat them and store them, but the disposal of the solid water and CO-{2} is too difficult a problem. When they warm up, the water in the plants melts and can be disposed of, and things are simpler.

II
THE FLUORINE PLANET
1. THE STAR AND PLANET
The planet named Niflheim is the fourth planet of Nu Puppis, right angle 6:36, declension-43:09; B8 type star, blue-white and hot, 148 light years distant from Earth, which will require a speed in excess of light to reach it.
Niflheim is 462,000,000 miles from its primary, a little less than the distance of Jupiter from our sun. It thus does not receive too great a total amount of energy, but what it does receive is of high potential, a large fraction of it being in the ultra-violet and higher frequencies. (Watch out for really super-special sunburn, etc., on unwarned personnel.)
The gravity of Niflheim is approximately 1 g, the atmospheric pressure approximately 1 atmosphere, and the average ambient temperature about-60°C;-76°F.
2. ATMOSPHERE
The oxidizer in the atmosphere is free fluorine (F-{2}) in a rather low concentration, about 4 or 5 percent. With it appears a mad collection of gases. There are a few inert diluents, such as N-{2} (nitrogen), argon, helium, neon, etc., but the major fraction consists of CF-{4} (carbon tetrafluoride), BF-{3} (boron trifluoride), SiF-{4} (silicon tetrafluoride), PF-{5} (phosphorous pentafluoride), SF-{6} (sulphur hexafluoride) and probably others. In other words, the fluorides of all the non-metals that can form fluorides. The phosphorous pentafluoride rains out when the weather gets cold. There is also free oxygen, but no chlorine. That would be liquid except in very hot weather. It sometimes appears combined with fluorine in chlorine trifluoride. The atmosphere has a slight yellowish tinge.
3. SOIL AND GEOLOGY
Above the metallic core of the planet, the lithosphere consists exclusively of fluorides of the metals. There are no oxides, sulfides, silicates or chlorides. There are small deposits of such things as bromine trifluoride, but these have no great importance. Since fluorides are weak mechanically, the terrain is flattish. Nothing tough like granite to build mountains out of. Since the fluoride ion is colorless, the color of the soil depends upon the predominant metal in the region. As most of the light metals also have colorless ions, the colored rocks are rather rare.
4. THE WATERS UNDER THE EARTH
They consist of liquid hydrofluoric acid (HF). It melts at-83°C and boils at 19.4°C. In it are dissolved varying quantities of metallic and non-metallic fluorides, such as boron trifluoride, sodium fluoride, etc. When the oceans and lakes freeze, they do so from the bottom up, so there is no layer of ice over free liquid.
5. PLANTS AND PLANT METABOLISM
The plants function by photosynthesis, taking HF as water from the soil, and carbon tetrafluoride as the equivalent of carbon dioxide from the air to produce chain compounds, such as:
H H H H | | | | --C--C--C--C-- | | | | F F F F
and at the same time liberating free fluorine. This reaction could only take place on a planet receiving lots of ultra-violet because so much energy is needed to break up carbon tetrafluoride and hydrofluoric acid. The plant catalyst (doubling for the magnesium in chlorophyll) is nickel. The plants are colored in various ways. They get their metals from the soil.
6. ANIMALS AND ANIMAL METABOLISM
Animals depend upon two main reactions for their energy, and for the construction of their harder tissues. The soft tissues are about the same as the plant molecules, but the hard tissues are produced by the reaction:
H H H F F F | | | | | | --C--C--C-- + F-{2} --> --C--C--C-- + HF | | | | | | F F F F F F
resulting in a teflon boned and shelled organism. He's going to be tough to do much with. Diatoms leave strata of powdered teflon. The main energy reaction is:
H H H | | | --C--C--C-- ... + F-{2} --> CF-{4} + HF | | | F F F
The blood catalyst metal is titanium,