"H. Beam Piper - Uller Uprising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

like cold snakes.


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5. PLANT LIFE

The plants are of the carbon-metabolism, silicate-shell type, like the primitive animals. They
spread out from the equator as far as they could go before the baking polar summers killed them.
They have normal seasonal growth in the temperate zones and remain dormant and frozen in the
winter. At the poles there is no vegetation, not because of the cold winter, but because of the
hot summer. The winter winds frequently blow over dead trees and roll them as far as the
equatorial seas. Other dead vegetation, because of the highly silicious water, always gets
petrified 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 CO2 and H2O, which are breathed out, while
the silicone goes into SiO2, 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 CO2 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 sun-bum, 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 (F2) 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,