Aphel

Everything awake on Aphel is in a hurry, and the reason is in its orbit, not its weather.

Aphel is the home world of the Convened. It is a rocky planet a little smaller than Earth, on a long and strongly stretched orbit round an orange star smaller and dimmer than the Sun. The star carries a survey catalogue number and no name the record has been given to use. Aphel is the Survey's name for the world, taken from the far point of its orbit, where it spends the long dark. The Convened have given the record no name for it. Each fact below is on this page because the Convened's bodies or their workings answer it, and the paragraph that gives it says which.

The Long Loop

Aphel's year is about two and a half standard years. At its nearest it is a little over two-thirds as far from its star as Earth is from the Sun; at its farthest it is four times further out than that. A world on such an orbit moves fastest when it is nearest, four times as fast at the near point as at the far one, so the close pass is quick and the far reach is slow. At the close pass the star shows a disc a little wider than the Sun's from Earth, and the light on the ground is not far short of Earth's. At the far point the star is a small hard disc a quarter that width, and its light a sixteenth of what the close pass brings.

So the year has two parts, and they are not equal. Light strong enough for anything on Aphel to grow lasts about three and a half months. For about eighteen months of the rest, the light is under a tenth of Earth's. The months between are the opening and the closing of the season, about four months at each end.

Nothing about the long dark is a mystery. It is the shape of the orbit, and it comes back to the day. Everything alive on Aphel knows when the season will close, and the danger is never that the close comes early. It is that the year's work is not finished when it comes. That is the fact the Convened are built on (below).

Air and Cold

The air is thick, with far more carbon dioxide than Earth's. That keeps the ground above freezing through the open season under a star this dim, and it keeps a human from breathing it unassisted; a survey party on the ground wears a mask and cold-weather gear in season, and does not stay through the dark. That is why the Survey has met the Convened only in season, which is the only time there is anyone to meet (Habitable, for Whom).

In the dark the ground freezes deep, and frost and snow lie on everything that is not sheltered. At the opening of the season they melt quickly, and the meltwater runs across ground still frozen underneath, pooling in hollows and flooding anything dug below it. Water left standing when the season closes freezes where it stands. That is the second piece of work the season holds, after the dens.

What Kills a Large Animal

On Aphel a large animal dies, far more often than of anything else, by being caught awake and in the open when the season closes. The light falls away quickly after the close pass: a few weeks after the open season ends it is half what it was, and ground that was soft at the start of those weeks is frozen at the end of them. An animal that has not stored enough to sleep on, or has not found shelter deep enough to hold its warmth, does not live to the next opening.

So everything alive on Aphel stores fast, shelters and goes still. The producers are low dark mats over the open ground, which grow only in the bright months and lie dormant under the frost for the rest. The large animals eat while the mats are growing, lay down reserves in their own bodies, and go into the ground. The body the Convened have answers this in its every part: heavy and low to hold warmth, built to dig, and able to open its hide along the back in the bright months to take the light as warmth, and close it for the dark (The Convened).

Dens, Channels and Stores

A shelter that will hold a large body through the dark has to be deep. Near the surface the ground follows the year from thaw to hard freeze; further down the swing is smaller, and deep enough it is small enough to sleep through. Aphel's large animals den in banks, where a body can dig sideways into the slope and seal the mouth behind it.

One body can dig itself a den in one open season, if it starts in time. A den that holds many bodies and their stores through the whole dark, deeper than the dark's cold can reach, is more digging than one body can do, and so is cutting channels to carry the meltwater away from the dens before it freezes in them, and so is laying in the stores. The season holds more work than any single body can finish in it. What the Convened do about that is on their own page, and it is the reason this page exists.

What the Record Does Not Hold

Aphel's position, its distance from Sol and its place on the fold routes. The length of its day, the tilt of its axis, and whether it has moons or seas. The names of its regions, and any name the Convened have for the world or its star, if they have one. How many Convened there are, and whether any other people lives on Aphel.

See also: The Convened, The Shape of a Life, Habitable, for Whom, Fliade, Cross-Biosphere Taxonomy: Frames and Lineages.