haps a
captured planet of another sun. For the greatest part of its 780-day
year it arcs far out from its primary, in a high-angled sweeping
cometary orbit. When it returns there is a brief, hot summer of
approximately eighty days before the long winter sets in once more.
This severe difference in seasonal change has caused profound
adaptations in the native life forms. During the winter most of the
animals hibernate, the vegetable life lying dormant as spores or
seeds. Some of the warm-blooded herbivores stay active in the
snow-covered tropics, preyed upon by fur-insulated carnivores.
Though unbelievably cold, the winter is a season of peace in
comparison to the summer.

For summer is a time of mad growth. Plants burst into life with
a strength that cracks rocks, growing fast enough for the motion
to be seen. The snowfields melt into mud and within days a jungle
stretches high into the air. Everything grows, swells, proliferates.
Plants climb on top of plants, fighting for the life-energy of the
sun. Everything is eat and be eaten, grow and thrive in that short
season. Because when the first snow of winter falls again, ninety
per cent of the year must pass until the next coming of warmth.

Mankind has had to adapt to the Anvharian cycle in order to stay
alive. Food must be gathered and stored, enough to last out the long
winter. Generation after generation had adapted until they look on
the mad seasonal imbalance as something quite ordinary. The first
thaw of the almost nonexistent spring triggers a wide-reaching
metabolic change in the humans. Layers of subcutaneous fat vanish
and half-dormant sweat glands come to life. Other changes are more
subtle than the temperature adjustment, but equally important. The
sleep center of the brain is depressed. Short naps or a night's rest
every third or fourth day becomes enough. Life takes on a hectic and
hysterical quality that is perfectly suited to the environment. By
the time of the first frost, rapid-growing crops have been raised
and harvested, sides of meat either preserved or frozen in mammoth
lockers. With this supreme talent of adaptability mankind has become
part of the ecology and guaranteed his own survival during the long
winter.

Physical survival has been guaranteed. But what about mental
survival? Primitive Earth Eskimos can fall into a long doze of
half-conscious hibernation. Civilized men might be able to do this,
but only for the few cold months of terres