The Darkside Of The Sun

ultraviolet content of the sunlight – universally black and bald.
    ‘The planet was settled in the Year of the Questing Monkey (A.S. 675) by a small party of earth-humans and a smaller colony of phnobes and there, perhaps, pan-Human relations are better than on any other world.
    ‘John Sabalos – the first of his dynasty – built himself a house by the Wiggly River, looking over the sea towards Great Creaking Marsh. His only skill was luck. He discovered in the giant floating bivalves that dwelt in the deep waters a metre-wide pearl made up largely of crude pilac, which turned out to be one of the growing number of death-immunity drugs. But pilac was found to be without many of the unfortunate drawbacks of many of the other twenty-six. It became the foundation of the family fortunes. John I extended his house, planted an orchard of cherry trees, became the first Chairman when Widdershins adopted Rule by Board of Directors, and died aged 301.
    ‘His son, John, is considered a wastrel. One example of his wastefulness suffices: he bought a shipload of rare fruits from Third Eye. Most were rotten on arrival. One mould was a strange green slime. By an unlikely combination of circumstances it was found to have curious regenerative properties. Within a year, just when dagon fishing was becoming almost impossible because of the high injury rate among the fishermen, it became a mark of manhood to have at least one limb with the peculiar greenish tint of the cell-duplicating googoo.
    ‘John II bought the Cheops pyramid from the Tsion subcommittee of the Board of Earth and had it lifted in one piece at an area of waste ground north of his home domes. When he made an offer for Luna, to replace Widdershins’ smaller but still serviceable moon, his young daughter Joan I packed him off to a mansion on the other side of the planet and took over as Managing Director. In her the Sabalos fortunes, hitherto dependent on a smiling fate, found a champion. They doubled within a year. A strict Sadhimist, she executed many reforms including the passage of the Humanity Laws.
    ‘Her son – she found time for a brief contract with a cousin – was John III, who became a brilliant probability mathematician in those early, exciting days of the art. It has been suggested that this was a peaceful escape from his mother and his wife Vian, a well-connected Earth noblewoman to whom he had been contracted in order to strengthen ties with Earth. He disappeared in strange circumstances just prior to the birth of his second child, the Dom Sabalos of legend. It is understood that he met with some kind of accident in the planet-wide marshes.
    ‘A body of myth surrounds the young Dom. Many stories relating to him are obviously apocryphal. For example, it is said that on the very date of his investiture as Chairman of the Planetary Board, he …’
    The stars were out as Dom reached the jetty which stretched from the home domes far out into the artificial harbour where the feral wind-shells were kept.
    Lamps were burning. Some of the early-duty fishermen were already preparing the shells for the night’s fishing; one old woman was deep-frying King cockles on a charcoal stove, and a tinny radio lying on the boards was playing, quite unheeded, an old Earth tune with the refrain, ‘Your Feet’s too Big’.
    Dom tied up at the jetty alongside the great silent bulk of a hospital float, and scrambled up the ladder.
    As he walked towards the domes he was aware of the silence. It spread out from him like a wake, from man to man. Heads rose in the lamplight and froze, watching him intently. Even the old woman lifted the pan from the stove and glanced up. There was something acute about the look in her eyes.
    Dom heard one sound as he slowly climbed the steps towards the main Sabalos dome. Someone started to say: ‘Not like his father, then, whatever they—’ and was nudged into silence.
    A Class Three robot stood by the door, armed with an antiquated sonic. It whirred into life as he approached and assumed a defiant stance.
    ‘Halt – who goes there? Enemy or Friend of Earth?’ it croaked, its somewhat corroded voice-box slurring the edges of the traditional Sadhimist challenge.
    ‘FOE, of course,’ said Dom, resisting the urge to give the wrong answer. He had done it once to see what would happen. The blast had left him temporarily deaf and the resonance had demolished a warehouse. Grandmother, who seldom smiled, had laughed quite a lot and