West of the sun

DR. CHRISTOPHER WRIGHT, anthropologist--he believed in man's basic goodness ... but could he put his trust in an alien race?

PAUL MASON--he dutifully shared his wife with his best friend.

DOROTHY LEEDS--Paul was her husband, but she knew there were some things more important than love.

SEARS OLIPHANT--the gentle scientist who inspired love in an alien.

ANN BRYAN--the youngest of them all, she had to be taught violence and passion.

EDMUND SPEARMAN--the rebel who had to have his own tribe to rule ... even though it meant war with his Earth companions.

Six humans alone against the deadly forces of a strange and distant planet.

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WEST OF THE SUN

EDGAR PANGBORN

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To Mary C. Pangborn

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Contents

PART ONE A.D. 2056 9

PART TWO The Year One 77

PART THREE The Year Ten 161

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Part One

A.D. 2056

1

Morning was flowing over the red-green planet. "What do we know?" The delicate brown face of Dorothy Leeds kindled with questions. "Summarize it."

Edmund Spearman achieved casualness. "Diameter and mass a trifle more than Earth's, larger orbit around a larger sun. A year of 458 days, twenty-six hours each. Moderate seasonal changes, axial tilt less than Earth's, orbit less elliptical. See the smallness of the north polar ice cap? The equatorial region--much too hot; the rest is subtropical to temperate. We should go down (if we do) near the 50th parallel--north, I'd say. Too much desert in the southern hemisphere. Might be hot winds, sandstorms."

"The red-green is vegetation?" Dr. Christopher Wright teetered on long legs before the screen, a classroom mannerism unchanged by eleven years in the wilderness of space. He pinched and pulled the skin on his Adam's apple, his hawk's-beak, small-chinned head jutting forward with an awkwardness not aggressive but intent. Paul Mason thought: You love him or hate him. In either case he's never quite grotesque. Wright's too-soft voice insisted: "It is, of course?"

"It has to be, Doc," Spearman said, and rubbed his bluish cheeks, looking older than his thirty-two years. Already he showed frontal baldness, deeply bracketed mouth corners. On Spearman's big shoulders was the burden of the ship. Watching him now, Paul Mason was troubled by a familiar thought: Captain Jensen should not have died.... "It has to be. The instruments show oxygen in Earth proportion, or somewhat richer, plus nitrogen and carbon dioxide. The camera gives us tree shadows in these latest photographs with the stronger lens. The air may make us oxygen-happy--if we go down.... Well, Dorothy--two continents, two oceans, both smaller than the Atlantic, connected narrowly at north and south polar regions. Dozens of lakes bigger than the Caspian. The proportion of land to water surface works out nearly the same as on Earth. No mountains to match the Himalayas, but some pretty high ranges. Unlimited forest, prairie, desert." He closed bloodshot eyes, pressing the lids. Paul Mason thought: I should never try to paint Ed. The portrait would always come out as Hercules Frustrated, and he wouldn't care for it.... Spearman said, "Even most of the tallest mountains look smooth--old. If there were glaciers it was a long time ago."