Uller Uprising | Page 4

zones and remain dormant and
frozen in the winter. At the poles there is no vegetation, not because of
the cold winter, but because of the hot summer. The winter winds
frequently blow over dead trees and roll them as far as the equatorial
seas. Other dead vegetation, because of the highly silicious water,
always gets petrified unless it is eaten first. What with the
quartz-speckled hides of the living vegetation and the solid quartz of
the dead, a forest is spectacular.
The silicone animals live on the plants. They chew them up, dehydrate
them, and convert their silicious outer bark and carbonaceous interiors
into silicones for themselves. When silicone tissue is metabolized, the
carbon and hydrogen go to CO-{2} and H-{2}O, which are breathed
out, while the silicone goes into SiO-{2}, which is deposited as more
teeth and armor. (Compare the terrestrial octopus, which makes
armor-plating out of calcium urate instead of excreting urea or uric
acid.) The animals can, of course, eat each other too, or make a meal of
the small carbonaceous animals of the equatorial seas.
Further note that the animals cannot digest plants when they are cold.
They can eat them and store them, but the disposal of the solid water
and CO-{2} is too difficult a problem. When they warm up, the water
in the plants melts and can be disposed of, and things are simpler.

II
THE FLUORINE PLANET
1. THE STAR AND PLANET
The planet named Niflheim is the fourth planet of Nu Puppis, right
angle 6:36, declension-43:09; B8 type star, blue-white and hot, 148
light years distant from Earth, which will require a speed in excess of
light to reach it.
Niflheim is 462,000,000 miles from its primary, a little less than the

distance of Jupiter from our sun. It thus does not receive too great a
total amount of energy, but what it does receive is of high potential, a
large fraction of it being in the ultra-violet and higher frequencies.
(Watch out for really super-special sunburn, etc., on unwarned
personnel.)
The gravity of Niflheim is approximately 1 g, the atmospheric pressure
approximately 1 atmosphere, and the average ambient temperature
about-60°C;-76°F.
2. ATMOSPHERE
The oxidizer in the atmosphere is free fluorine (F-{2}) in a rather low
concentration, about 4 or 5 percent. With it appears a mad collection of
gases. There are a few inert diluents, such as N-{2} (nitrogen), argon,
helium, neon, etc., but the major fraction consists of CF-{4} (carbon
tetrafluoride), BF-{3} (boron trifluoride), SiF-{4} (silicon
tetrafluoride), PF-{5} (phosphorous pentafluoride), SF-{6} (sulphur
hexafluoride) and probably others. In other words, the fluorides of all
the non-metals that can form fluorides. The phosphorous pentafluoride
rains out when the weather gets cold. There is also free oxygen, but no
chlorine. That would be liquid except in very hot weather. It sometimes
appears combined with fluorine in chlorine trifluoride. The atmosphere
has a slight yellowish tinge.
3. SOIL AND GEOLOGY
Above the metallic core of the planet, the lithosphere consists
exclusively of fluorides of the metals. There are no oxides, sulfides,
silicates or chlorides. There are small deposits of such things as
bromine trifluoride, but these have no great importance. Since fluorides
are weak mechanically, the terrain is flattish. Nothing tough like granite
to build mountains out of. Since the fluoride ion is colorless, the color
of the soil depends upon the predominant metal in the region. As most
of the light metals also have colorless ions, the colored rocks are rather
rare.
4. THE WATERS UNDER THE EARTH

They consist of liquid hydrofluoric acid (HF). It melts at-83°C and
boils at 19.4°C. In it are dissolved varying quantities of metallic and
non-metallic fluorides, such as boron trifluoride, sodium fluoride, etc.
When the oceans and lakes freeze, they do so from the bottom up, so
there is no layer of ice over free liquid.
5. PLANTS AND PLANT METABOLISM
The plants function by photosynthesis, taking HF as water from the soil,
and carbon tetrafluoride as the equivalent of carbon dioxide from the
air to produce chain compounds, such as:
H H H H | | | | --C--C--C--C-- | | | | F F F F
and at the same time liberating free fluorine. This reaction could only
take place on a planet receiving lots of ultra-violet because so much
energy is needed to break up carbon tetrafluoride and hydrofluoric acid.
The plant catalyst (doubling for the magnesium in chlorophyll) is
nickel. The plants are colored in various ways. They get their metals
from the soil.
6. ANIMALS AND ANIMAL METABOLISM
Animals depend upon two main reactions for their energy, and for the
construction of their harder tissues. The soft tissues are about the same
as the plant molecules, but the hard tissues are produced by the
reaction:
H H H F F