There was a
limit to
what the Sunnoad
could do to prepare Syoom for the ordeal which lay ahead. Part of his
task was to spread the word that the Aoan Hive had not averted, only
postponed, the coming doom. Ao had given mankind an extra
breathing space, but that now there was nothing for it but to let the
Foam come, letting it spend its force like a flood so that it
could sink once
more.
And what, asked the people of Syoom, was this
Foam?
It was a stirring or a flare in the normally weak, faint
life-force of the gralm. Gralm is usually taken
for granted on Ooranye. It is the loam-like granular material that
covers the Uranian plains. It is thought of as semi-alive, with a
much fainter flicker of life than the lowliest organic entity, but,
because of the vastness of the oceanic world-plain, its total force must
be considerable. And in era 57, the Lanthanum Era, the shortest of
the great eras (1,051,880 Uranian days; 43 Uranian years; =
3600 Earth years) it suddenly and bizarrely expanded
as though it were popcorn. Within days the plains around the
cities of Syoom had humped and were threatening to bury the cities under
a hard, pumice-like stuff.
If this had happened on Earth, people would have been
driven to insanity or superstition, trying to work out or come to terms
with what was happening. On Ooranye, though the experience was
daunting, it was "just one of those things" - unusually severe in its
effects but no harder to accept than any other mystery.
Tunnels and air-holes and vehicle-exits were dug in the
Foam. The buried cities carried on a reduced existence as they had
done during the snow-bound Titanium Era. The era of the Foam was
much longer than that of the Great Winter, but there was no cold to
contend with. Cities' populations plummeted because of food
shortages, which drove many people to seek food in the wilderness,
sometimes into Fyaym. Most perished but some succeeded in founding
new communities far from the Foam, so that the Foam actually was the
cause of the expansion of some of the borders of Syoom, while of course
Syoom was greatly weakened at its centre.
Luckily, no
great Fyayman hostile power was wielded
at this time. This would have been the ideal period for
the Quonians to invade, but they did not; perhaps they had troubles of their
own; at any rate Syoom survived without being occupied by any mortal
enemy. It did not, however, survive unscathed. The long-term results of
the Foam must be examined in the next section of this survey; here we will describe
its departure.
All bad things come to an end and the Foam was no
exception; afer over a million days it suddenly became brittle.
This fact was discovered accidentally at many locations at once, when
excited travellers poked at it with their poles or staffs and saw with
amazement that the material now turned to powder when
touched.
A short era followed (era 58, the Cerium, 123 days 22
hours) during which most of the formerly buried cities were largely dug
free again, and great stretches of plain around them were cleared for
planting, beginning to recreate a landscape which had not been seen for
a hundred generations.
Like a person who has been bedridden for a long time,
and at last is told nen is cured, impatiently throws off the bedclothes
and totters to nen's feet, so the people of Syoom could not wait for a
new era. What little energy they had left, they largely dissipated
in their frenzied efforts to dig their cities out of the crumbled Foam,
while great surges of expectation washed through their weakened
civilization. The greatest efforts of all were made to dig Skyyon
out. Skyyon, the tallest city because of its unique double-tiered,
double-disked structure, was the one which had the largest volume of
Foam to get rid of. The day came when the three
ayashou around the upper rim were freed, and
lines of skimmers could once more queue up to float up and down the
airstreams. That day was the day expectations were fulfilled and
emotions stirred to the extent of triggering an eomasp
and the start of a new era.
>> The Praesodymium Spotlight
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