H Beam Piper - First Cycle

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Piper H. Beam

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Avg. Customer Review:

A must-read, June 8, 2001

Reviewer

When a wandering red dwarf star enters an established solar system, it splits a giant

planet in half and creates two sister planets upon both of which intelligent life evolves.

One planet gets most of the water, and its humanoids evolve to be religious, hierarchical,

socialistic, and sneaky. The other world is dry, and its humanoids evolve to be atheistic

(to the point of having no concept of gods), individualistic, capitalistic, and honest. Once

contact is established, can two such different species get along, and if not, then what will

be the cost?

Mr. H. Beam Piper is probably one of the most underrated science-fiction authors. He

was a master of presenting unique milieus in a fascinating and understandable manner.

First Cycle, succeeds in being both thought provoking and spellbinding, and is (in my

opinion) one of Piper's best stories ever. As always, the worlds herein are unusual and

presented in a scientific manner that makes them seem so very real. This is one book you

really must read!

A Cold War warning transposed into Science Fiction., July 9, 1998

Reviewer

A good answer to the question of who wins an atomic war. Finished after Piper's death

from a manuscript. Written just after Uller Uprising, and probably abandoned as other

projects came up. Still, a good philosophical tale in the standard Piper manner: you never

realize that you're being preached to.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter One

For endless millenia the red dwarf, pulled from its home orbit by some random stellar

happenstance, crossed the lonely void between the two galaxies of the near universe.

Curving and twisting through the competing attraction—weak but inevitable—of the

gravity wells of distant nebulae, it gradually swung around to head toward a particular

medium-sized star cluster. Penetrating the cluster, it bore straight toward the eight-planet

system of a yellow-white star thirty-eight light years from the cluster's gravitic center.

The eighth planet, and the seventh, and the sixth, were on the far sides of their orbits

as the red dwarf approached; but the fifth, a methane giant with three major satellites,

was in harm's way. As they closed together, the planet heated; its coating of frigid gasses

flowed, and then vaporized. Great tidal forces tore at the planet's dense, solid core.

Quakes and explosions shook the surface; the atmosphere burned.

For an instant, during which the great planet seemed to hesitate in its orbit, the seismic

insult increased past endurance. Two of the three major moons were ripped away; they

spiraled inward to the yellow star and disappeared as though they had never been. The

third satellite, torn almost equally between its mother planet and the passing dwarf,

slowed in its orbit, and then, as the red star passed, came crashing down on its primary.

This final shock broke the giant planet into two almost equal halves, and a minor planet's

worth of solar debris.

The red dwarf, dragging the broken halves after it, dived toward the yellow star. The

fourth planet escaped with no more than superficial damage, the third passed unscathed.

But the second was directly in the path of the destroyer. It swung from its orbit, spun

madly for an instant, and then hurtled into the red star like a racing scull ramming a

battleship.

Relatively, the planet's mass and impact were trivial; the sacrificial collision, however,

prevented a greater catastrophe at the center of the system. The invader caromed slightly

off course, lost momentum, and was trapped. The attraction of the yellow sun, the lesser

attractions of the planet family, and the red dwarfs own new velocity combined to pin it

to an orbit slightly greater than that of the planet it had just annihilated. Spinning around

one another like a pair of bar-shot on an ever-shortening bar, the two fragments of the

fifth planet followed it.

In time, as time is measured in the cosmos, the system stabilized. The frozen outer

planets wheeled around their ancient orbits. The shattered fifth had left a wide gap. There

was a thin belt of meteoric debris inside the orbit of the third. And, just beyond the orbit

of the vanished second, the new comer and her own new satellite chain traced and re-

traced the orbits imposed on them; yellow star, red dwarf, and attendant fragments

forming a three-body system at the apexes of a one-hundred and fifty million kilometer

equilateral triangle.

The two planet fragments slowly accommodated themselves to one another and to the

rest of their violently re-formed solar system. They crumbled, pulled together,

compressed into spheres. Stripped of all atmosphere in the cataclysm which had sundered

them, they formed now gaseous envelopes, lost them as the heated gas molecules

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PiperH.BeamCustomerReviewsAvg.CustomerReview:Amust-read,June8,2001Reviewer:Whenawanderingreddwarfstarentersanestablishedsolarsystem,itsplitsagiantplanetinhalfandcreatestwosisterplanetsuponbothofwhichintelligentlifeevolves.Oneplanetgetsmostofthewater,anditshumanoidsevolvetobereligious,hierarchical,so...

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