Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 82: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

80 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION should not become unendurable for creatures with liquid methane in their tissues. Precession should be quite rapid, of course, because of the tremendous equatorial bulge, which will give the sun’s gravity a respectable grip even though most of the world’s mass is near its center. I have not attempted to compute the precessional period, but if anyone likes to assume that a switch in habitable hemispheres occur- ring every few thousand years has kept the natives from building a high civilization I won’t argue. Of course, I will also refrain from disagreement with anyone who wants to credit the periodic climate change with respon- sibility for the development of intel- ligence on the planet, as our own ice ages have sometimes been given credit for the present mental stature of the human race. Take your pick. For - story purposes, I’m satisfied with the fact that either possibility can be defended. The conditions of the planet, basi- cally, are pretty well defined. There is still a lot of detail work. I must design a life form able to stand those conditions—more accurately, to regard them as ideal—which is not too diffi- cult since I don’t have to describe the life processes in rigorous detail. Any- one who wants me to will have to wait until someone can do the same with our own life form. Vegetation using solar energy to build up higher, un- saturated hydrocarbons and animal life getting its energy by reducing those compounds back to the satu- rated form with atmospheric hydrogen seemed logical enough to me. In the story, I hinted indirectly at the exist- ence of enzymes aiding the reduction, by mentioning that plant tissues would burn in the hydrogen atmos- phere if a scrap or two of meat were tossed onto the fuel. The rest of the detail work consists of all my remaining moves in the game —finding things that are taken for granted on our own world and would not be true on this one. Such things as the impossibility of throwing, jumping, or flying, at least in the higher latitudes; the tremendously rapid de- crease of air density with height in the same regions, producing a mirage effect that makes the horizon seem above an observer all around; the terrific Coriolis force that splits any — developing storm into a series of relatively tiny cells—and would make artillery an interesting science if we could have any artillery; the fact that methane vapor is denser than hydro- gen, removing a prime Terrestrial cause of thunderstorm and hurricane formation; the rate of pressure in- crease below the ocean surface, and what that does to the art of naviga- tion; the fact that icebergs won’t float, so that much of the ocean bot- toms may be covered with frozen methane; the natural preference of methane for dissolving organic mate- rials such as facts rather than mineral salts, and what that will do to ocean composition—maybe icebergs would float after all. You get the idea. The trouble was, I couldn’t possibly think of all these things in advance; time and again a section of the story had to be rewritten because I suddenly realized things couldn’t happen that way. I must have missed details, of course; that’s where your chance to win the game comes in. I had an advantage; the months during which in my spare hours, my imagination roamed over Mesklin’s vast areas in search of inconsistencies. Now the advantage is yours; I can make no more moves in the game, and you have all the time you want to look for the things I’ve said which reveal slips on the part of my imagination. Well, good luck—and a good time, whether you beat me or not. Conmmiclbooolkkxs.con