what to see on
styx

For a scenic browse, and an answer-page for Guess The World...

the natives of styx

...Curt and the two Futuremen started through the white forest toward the distant towers.

It was a ghostly forest.  The enormous, pallid club-mosses around them loomed a dozen feet above their heads.  A small, hairy white rodent darted across their path.  There were no other sounds.  Overhead stretched the semi-opaque curtain across the whole starred, dusky sky...

"Someone coming!" Otho hissed suddenly.

"Into the grass!" Curt ordered, flinging himself down into the tall, concealing white grasses.

Grag and Otho instantly followed his example.  Raising his head a little, Captain Future looked toward the city, from which direction was coming an increasing sound of muffled thudding.

Then he saw who came.  They were a dozen of the so-called Magicians - semi-human creatures with bodies covered by short, thick white fur, two-toed feet and two-fingered hands, and flattened, unhuman heads out of which stared huge, black, pupil-less eyes.

The Magicians were riding white, hairy beasts that reminded Curt of the ancient Earth kangaroo - beasts of burden that hopped along in giant leaps on two powerful legs, their heads held erect by reins running back to their strange riders...

Edmond Hamilton, Calling Captain Future (1940, 1967)

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approaching planet town on styx

The Perseus was now dropping rapidly toward the gray moon.  As they neared it, the grayish surface paled to a dull white.  There lay beneath them a strange and ghostly landscape of rolling plain of white grass, dotted with clumps of towering white club-mosses.  It was half-veiled by drifting banks of dense gray mists.

Solemn chords of mystery and awe struck into the hearts of the beholders as they gazed across the shrouded face of the System’s most mysterious world.  They stared silently as the ship slanted down toward the northern hemisphere.  Low, rocky hills and gorges lay in the misty distance, but nearer than these was a shallow valley in which was situated a small, sprawling town of light metalloy buildings.

“That’s Planet Town, where we’re going to make our base,” informed Jeff Lewis.  “It’s the only ‘foreign’ cololy on Styx.”

“But this town has ordinary metalloy buildings,” Laura Lind was saying in surprise.  “I thought Styx didn’t have any metal?”

“It doesn’t,” Jim Willard retorted.  “Not a bit of metal exists on Styx except a few traces of cobalt, titanium and other rare elements.  Scientists have never been able to explain the lack of metal.  As to this town, the interplanetary traders who built it brought the metalloy with them.”

Edmond Hamilton, Magic Moon (Captain Future, Winter 1944)

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