Summertime on Icarus AKA The Hottest Piece Of Real Estate In The Solar System: Trapped Where the Sun Never Blinks

Summertime on Icarus by Arthur C. Clarke - Alone on the scorching side of this tiny little world, an astronaut races against time as the blazing sun creeps closer to incinerating him. Survival depends on outthinking the most unforgiving environment in the solar system.

When Colin Sherrard opened his eyes after the crash, he could not imagine where he was. He seemed to be lying. trapped in some kind of vehicle, on the summit of a rounded hill which sloped steeply away in all directions. Its surface was seared and blackened, as if a great fire had swept over it. Above him was a jet-black sky crowded with stars; one of them hung like a tiny, brilliant sun, low down on the horizon.

Could it be the sun? Was he so far from Earth? No-that was impossible. Some nagging memory told him that the sun was very close-hideously close-not so distant that it had shrunk to a star. And with that thought, full consciousness returned. Sherrard knew exactly where he was, and the knowledge was so terrible that he almost fainted again.

He was nearer to the sun than any man had ever been. His damaged space-pod-a miniature spaceship, only ten feet long-was lying on no hill, but the steeply-curving surface of a world only two miles in diameter. That brilliant star sinking swiftly in the west was the light of "Prometheus," the ship that had brought him here across so many millions of miles of space. She was hanging up there among the stars, wondering why his pod had not returned like a homing pigeon to its roost. In a few minutes she would have passed from sight, dropping below the horizon in her perpetual game of hide-and-seek with the sun.

That was a game that he had lost. He was still on the night side of the asteriod, in the cool safety of its shadow, but the short night would be ending soon.

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Lydbog: 25. august 2025