《Flare Time 》作者：- Larry Niven【EPUB】

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Flare Time Larry Niven Produced by calibre 0.6.40 FLARE TIME If the starships arrival had done nothing else for Bronze Legs this was enough: he was seeingthe sky again. For this past week the rammers had roamed through Touchdown City. The fifty-year-old colonywas still small everybody knew everybody. It was hard to get used to this influx of oddly-accented strangers stumbling about with vacuous smiles and eyes wide with surprise andpleasure. Even the Medean humans were catching the habit. In his thirty-four earth years oflife Calvin quotBronze Legsquot Miller had explored fifteen thousand square miles of the infinitevariety that was Medean. Strange that it took people from another world to make him look up. Here was a pretty picture: sunset over the wild lands north of the colony. Peaks to the southwere limned in bluish-white from the farmlands beyond from the lamps that kept terrestrialplants growing. Everything else was red infinite shades of red. To heatward a level horizoncut the great disk of Argo in half. You could feel the heat on your cheek and watch sullenlyglowing storms move in bands across the face of the red-hot super jovian world. To coldwardPhrixus and Helle were two glaring pink dots following each other down to the ridge. The JetStream stretched straight across the blue sky a pinkish-white band of cloud from horizon tohorizon. Thirty or forty multicolored balloons linked in a cluster were settling to graze ascum-covered rain pool in the valley below him. Blue-tinged shadows pooled in the valley and three human shapes moved through the red andorange vegetation. Bronze Legs recognized Lightning Harness and Grace Carpenter even at thisdistance. The third had a slightly hunchbacked look and a metal headdress gleamed in herstraight black hair. That would be Rachel Subramaniams memory recording equipment. Her headkept snapping left and right ever eager for new sights. Bronze Legs grinned. He tried to imagine how this must look to a rammer an off worlder hesucceeded only in remembering himself as a child. All this strangeness all this red. He turned the howler and continued uphill. At the crest of the ridge a fux waited for him the pinkish-white suns behind her. She was ablack silhouette four thin legs and two thin arms a pointed face and a narrow torso bent inan L: a lean mean centaur-shape. As he topped the ridge and let the howler settle on its air cushion the fur backed awayseveral meters. Bronze Legs wondered why then