g 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 absent-minded with.

The chartered company that colonized it, back at the end of the Fourth
Century A.E., went bankrupt in ten years, and it wouldn't have taken
that long if communication between Terra and Fenris hadn't been a
matter of six mon