INTRODUCTION

In the orbital photo above, Tharn's polar cap looks big--as big, proportionately, as Earth's, and far bigger than Mars's. That's deceptive! This shot was taken in late fall, after blizzards dusted half the northern tundra. In some spots autumn dust storms have tinted the snowpack pink or salmon; these darkened areas may well warm enough in the low sun to melt again before true winter sets in. The war between red and white is most obvious in the dappled upper left, where valleys are still snow-free, but this patchy skirt of mere winter snowfields on tundra goes all around the ice cap. Though uninviting now, these plains do sustain lichen and grass in summer--and that sustains whole nomadic peoples.

The true ice cap can be made out--it's about 40% the width of the whole snow-patch, and looks much thicker. But it's not deep by Terran standards; most is just 1-200 meters. The weight of the ice is enough to make it flow slowly, but the cap is far less active than Antarctica or Greenland.

Terran icecaps generate what are called katabatic winds--not just cold and dry, but relentless gales powered by the steep drop off ice-plateaus two miles high (cold air is denser, right? It wants to drop.) While cold dry winds often blow off Tharn's ice cap, they're not katabatic (not hurricane-fierce, not constant) for there's no great drop to fuel them. Without that deadly gale, life ventures closer to the ice cap than on Earth.

Let's have a look at these subpolar regions. I'll run counter-clockwise around the ice, starting at the top around Lake Yoee.

AROUND ZOR CHASMA

Mrr Trench is the longest subduction trench on Tharn; it's up to 6 km deep. At the top edge of the orbital photo (and just off the map) is Lake Mwaa, 1000 km long, a slender lake along the trench-bottom. Mwaa lies in a rainbelt, so instead of the separate brackish lakes common in trenches, Mwaa is fresh, large and deep; its surface is only 2.5 km below datum. That's still so far down that the shores are very warm for this latitude--quite temperate, and densely forested. And not wildwood: fruit- and nut-trees alternate with house-trees, all loving tended by the arboreal, winged lebbirds native to Mrr Trench.

Lake Mwaa drains north into Lake Yoee, the long lake at upper right in the photo and the top of the map. Smaller than Mwaa, Yoee is still 700 km long (450 mi), stretching from 57-65 north. Hmmm. I just noticed my sketchmap is wrong--Yoee runs closer to the pole than I've shown. Sigh!

Lying fully 3 km below datum (10,000' down), Lake Yoee's an oasis of warm, mild air in a frigid region; the northernmost woods in the world line its shores. Yoee's quite salty, as the dry polar air evaporates it; the lake only exists because it's fed from the south by huge Lake Mwaa. It's home to the northernmost lebbirds on Tharn. They don't venture out of the Trench, for they can't fly in the thin air of Yoee Steppe, two miles above them, where camaroos (shaggy, bipedal cameloids) herd their flocks on the windy grasslands below the snows of the Thosh Range and Mrr Mountains.

East of Mrr Trench lies the Zuki Sea---a cool brackish lake 1300 km long and 250 wide (820 by 150 mi), with a convoluted, dark-forested shore. Too high up for lebbirds, too closed-in for most camaroos, the Zuki Forest is the home of a wingless species called mops, like huge, toothy, flashy-feathered ravens, living in carved lodges with totem poles. They trade with thotter fishing villages out on the islands and capes.

Beyond the Zuki forest is Zor Chasma, a rift valley dotted with lakes and hot springs, stretching nearly pole to pole. Twin ridges flank the main rift; these block the harsh polar winds, making the sea-basins to the south almost temperate. Below these ice-capped ridges, on their alpine slopes and in dark valleys full of low evergreens, camaroos herd flocks of Woolly Anoxia, the only domestic animals that can bear the cold thin air of the ridges... or the mineralized water of the Rift.

ONDRONKA REGION

North of Zor Chasma is a tongue of the polar ice called the Thosh Range. Peaks rise 2-3 km (6600-10,000'). North of it lies Thosh Tundra, a hilly region of winding shallow rivers. In the photo, the tundra's as dappled as leopard-fur: white hills, snowfree valleys. Some wind right up into the polar ice, like Antarctica's Dry Valleys.

East of Thosh Tundra, and at first indistinguishable from it, is the Ondronka Basin. The sinuous Ondronka River flows east (in summer; nothing here flows anwhere in winter) collecting milky water from many tributaries off the tundra and the ice cap to the north. It cuts through the Gomlap Hills, a range 2500 km long (1600 mi) but only 2 km high (6600'). Still, the Gomlaps are as glaciated as the Thosh Range; they form an icy arm of the polar cap reaching south almost to the Zuki Sea. The Ondronka River cuts through the range midway, forming an impressive canyon, then winds southeast to Lake Ondronka, a brackish little sea 200 km long and half as wide (125 by 60 mi). Around the lake, 500 km in every direction, stretches cold but fertile tundra. Here and in Thosh live mamooks, huge lichen- and grass-eaters who look nothing like mammoths but fill a similar niche.

To the south of the tundra, on the left edge of the photo, is Rapass Crater---an impact basin 120 km (75 mi) across. The shady faces of the rim have glaciers; a cold, milky lake 30 km wide (20 mi) fills the center. Dark forest covers most of the floor and lower slopes. It's an ecological island, and a cultural one: a complex four-species society has settled its microclimates.

To the northeast (lower left edge of photo) is the Duhor Sea, 1000 km long and 300 wide, dotted with wooded islands where thotters fish. A bit further east are the four Rronk Lakes, 150-250 km long (off edge of close-up; see big photo). Around them all stretches Rronk Forest, the largest boreal forest on Tharn. This cool evergreen strip runs 7000 km from the Rapass Crater east to the Sea of P'tang.

In Rronk live elaffes--not their name for themselves (an unpronounceable rumble), but a descriptive trade-term for these huge quadrupeds with long necks and prehensile trunks.

South of Rronk Forest is Dejah Upland. The Drampe River is the main stream draining northern Dejah. C-shaped Lake Drampe, 190 km across (120 mi), collects streams in the alpine upper basin; the Drampe then flows north off Dejah Upland and bends sharply west through Rronk Forest to drain into the Duhor Sea. The river's 1900 km long (1200 mi), though its source and delta aren't far apart! The upper basin is populated almost exclusively by mamooks; it's too cold for elaffes.

KANTOL RIFT

Once Zor Chasma bends east and acquires glaciers on its ridges, it also acquires a new name: Kantol Rift. Geologically it's the same: a spreading zone for new crust. On Earth, it'd be a mid-ocean rift; here it's exposed. Kantol snakes east, north of Dejah Upland, the Sea of P'tang, then Thoris Upland, and then bends south into the temperate zone again. As the coldest of the rift zones, not only do Kantol's twin ridges sport glaciers in spots; its central rift valley is largely forested, not desert or savanna as in most rifts. Sheltered from the polar winds by the ridge, this long valley has some of the northernmost woods in the world.

Lake Amhor breaks up the monotony of the rift-floor forest strip. A narrow sea 500 km (300 mi) long, Amhor changes color seasonally; the bottom seethes with hot springs and tufa towers; its mineral balance is peculiar and its bacterial population unique and quite dense in summer.

It's a fascinating sight, but no one lives here. Gleaners of mineral salts visit, but thotters go bald if they swim in that stuff. Nor is fishing an option--the lake's life is all bitter-tasting. The largest and most advanced creatures are spider-stars--five whiplike arms, rudimentary eyes, under a kilo (2.2 lbs)...

OZARA BASIN

Just north of Lake Amhor and Kantol Rift is the Ozara Sea, a shallow, brackish body 800 km long (500 mi) in the center of a broad tundra basin. Ozara is choked with low islands; the complex, marshy shore looks from above like a cartoon of a dead sparrow. A few thotter villages are the only permanent settlements; Ozara is exposed to the cold dry winds off the polar ice. Much of the Ozara Basin, and all of it north of the Sea, is bare tundra where only bands of grass- and lichen-eating mamooks roam. Even in summer the winds can pick up during the long afternoons; while mamooks can endure the cold quite easily, in summer they want more: good acoustics. It's time for a chong-ma: a music festival, a competition, and a marriage market all in one, where mamooks of both sexes try to impress potential mates with ballads and drum-stories. Ozara is just too windy and marshy.

But the Hulam Mountains break up the south, sheltering forests from the polar winds. The Hulams are really three ranges 3-4 km high, paralleling the Kantol Rift for 1000 km (625 mi). Between the North and Central Hulams lies long Lake Yaruu in a subalpine valley. Hulam and Yaruu are mamook names, for these huge, cold-tolerant people are the only ones to inhabit the uplands. Sheltered from the winds, the Hulam valleys seem ideal for a great chong-ma. There is a modest one, but strictly local; for over the Muptip Hills to the east, the largest chong-ma in the northern hemisphere is held in Ulvas Crater. Poor Ozara! It's in a cultural as well as ecological shadow. The Raksar Basin is just plain richer...

The Yaruu Valley, though, is fairly mild, and more diverse. The Valley's a cool, green patchwork of subalpine meadows and dark evergreen woods; an oasis for mops and camaroos as well as mamooks. The narrow east-west lake, some 400 km long (250 mi), drains east then north into the Ozara Sea; its shores are home to some of the northernmost thotters in the world.

Further east, the Muptip Range is a low but snowy northern spur of the ridges flanking Kantol Rift. In a Terran sea-basin the Muptips (like the Hulams before them) might be dubbed a fracture zone. They rise up to 2500 m (8,250') and run about 2000 km (1250 mi) north, dividing the Raksar and Ozara Basins. Even mamooks only visit in summer; the heights are bare and windy.

RAKSAR BASIN

Bayond the Muptips is the much warmer, greener Raksar Basin. The U-shaped Raksar Sea is nearly 2000 km long (1200 mi). It lies between the towering Orovar Range, the low Muptips, Kantol Rift, and the polar tundra. Raksar's shores are evergreen forest, one of the greatest in the north; an elaffe homeland, especially on the warmer south shore.

The north coast is rugged; the splash apron of Ombra Crater forms a broad peninsula, the center of Raksar's U-shape. Ombra's rays of debris form straight, radial capes and "fjords" along the north shore, 160-250 km long (100-150 mi); stray mountains of debris also form the Brako Islands, which nearly divide the Sea here. The Brakos stretch hundreds of km, though you need a good map to tell which "capes" are really islands. Narrow Ombra Strait (only 10 km wide--6 mi) leads from central Raksar into Ulvas Arm, the western third of the Sea. To the south far wider Brako Strait (30 km/20 mi), also leads into Ulvas Arm. Most of the people here are mops, well adapted to boreal forest, but thotters fish the fjords and islands.

To the north, Ombra Crater is one of Tharn's largest, ruggedest impact features: 190 km wide (120 mi). A lake fills the crater's floor below a ring of ridges snowcapped even in summer. It's a little world of its own, sheltered from the polar winds; the north side, facing the sun to the south, feels almost temperate. The dense population of thotters, mops and camaroos live in close proximity here, forming a hybrid culture.

Ulvas Crater is an equally huge impact scar, but shallower, with low walls and a sediment-choked floor with a shallow lake. It's no mystery why Ulvas is so flat: ice-bearing strata probably melted to mud on impact, for Ulvas lies in the polar tundra, a thousand km (600 mi) northwest of Ombra Crater. Cold and treeless, it has no permanent residents; but every summer, mamooks gather for the largest chong-ma in the north. They fill the north end of the crater, where the rim blocks the wind, drumming and chanting the year's compositions. The plain thunders for miles.

Despite their different depths and appearances, Ulvas and Ombra are the same size and age; they may be simultaneous scars from a chain of comet strikes. If more fragments did hit, the polar ice has hidden the craters.

The east end of Raksar Sea bends north into another great lobe, Koba Arm. The shores are low and marshy, but still backed by forest, except for the Koba Delta at the north end of the Arm: here the marsh fades into treeless tundra.

THE OROVARS

The Orovar Range is a chain of huge shield volcanoes, like the Hawaiian chain without their cloaking sea...or the volcanoes of Mars, for the southern Orovars rise 12-16 km (40-50,000'). Mount Gholit, at the southwest end of the range, resembles Olympus. The hot spot creating the Orovar chain is presumably under it, but it may be slipping further southwest, and will eventually build other peaks, while Gholit, its fires quenched, slowly erodes down to merely Himalayan height, like the other Orovars. Indeed, it's already happening; under its southwestern shoulder, lost in the glare of its icefields, a few cones already rise as tall as Fuji, Ararat and even Denali.

All the peaks, being above most of the atmosphere, are nearly bare rock; monstrous calderas yawn fifty miles wide in utter silence. Not a bird, not a grassblade. It really could be Mars. Even the Orovars' shoulders above 8-10 km are virtually dead. But down around their waists, 5-7 km up (say, 20,000'), mamooks browse lichens and grass, followed by camaroo in the alpine meadows 4-5 km up, then a ring of mops in the cool evergreen forests at 3-4 km, and so on down their foothills--half a dozen species in concentric contour-belts. These foothills and the rolling Shental Valley to the east are rather culturally innovative given the sparse population, because so many species with different habitat-needs live so close together.

GAHAN BASIN

Lake Haja, northeast of the Orovars, is 700 km (450 mi) long though very narrow. Haja's treeless shores are marshes where thotters fish and raise parru; camaroos herd flocks anoxia in the surrounding steppes. Thin woods huddle in sheltered mountain valleys south of the lake, supporting small mop villages.

Further east over the snowy Haja Range is a big sister: the Gahan Sea. Gahan is 800 km long (500 mi), and much wider. It's a few degrees further from the pole than Haja, and its wide sheet of water humidifies the cold dry winds from the north, so low arctic forest lines its south shore; the shores are a mixed society of mops, thotters, and camaroo.

Both lakes are in the top right corner of this photo; there's a better view in a high-orbital photo in the next section.

P'DROMA DESERT

Northwest of the Gahan Basin, a vast tundra sprawls for 1600 km. The lower stretches of the Gahan River, though cold, windy and treeless, support lush grasses--and a (relatively) dense population of mamooks along with some camaroo. But the upper valley slowly grows colder and drier, until it looks as stark as Mars--red rocks, tiny snowdrifts, and wind. (Still, dear Terran readers, remember--despite appearances, this is not Mars. Even this wasteland has 20 times the air pressure, only a few per cent of the hard radiation, and far more warmth than Mars. Many of Tharn's uplands are worse, having half this air pressure and twice the radiation.)

This long red stretch is the P'Droma Desert. It's a mamook name, for only those huge, well-insulated lichen-eaters can survive here. Occasional camaroo caravans do pass through; travelers from northern Mrr Trench or Zor Chasma to the Barsoom Basin take a polar route, much as a San Francisco-to-Paris flight on Earth skirts the pole. True, walking every tedious mile through these grim regions is different than merely cruising above them; but on Tharn, longer, low-latitude routes are equally difficult--great uplands stand in the way, with just as much snow and even thinner air and harsher radiation.

Caravans across the P'droma can (in a good summer) graze for fodder; but just as often, dust storms or blizzards tie them down for days. Wise caravan-guides insist that pack animals carry their own fodder. In a bad year, caravans reaching the shores of Gahan or Umka look like living skeletons... if they make it at all.

As the land begins to drop, the P'Droma Desert fades back into tundra ringing the Umka Sea.

Oh--remember this low-orbital photo was shot from over the pole looking south. Haja and Gahan Lakes are on the right with Llana Upland on the horizon; the P'droma's dead center, with the Umka Sea to the left.

UMKA BASIN

The Umka Sea is the northernmost large sea on Tharn. 700 km (450 mi) across, it's cold, marshy and brackish, but still--it's water, and as always on Tharn, life congregates around it. Umka's coastal flats are a major meeting-ground for the nomadic mamooks, partly because no other species shares its limited resources. It's not the severe climate--camaroos could survive here--but the isolation. Thuvia Upland to the south, the Mrr Range to the east, the polar cap to the north, P'droma Desert behind us--all equally forbidding. Occasional camaroo caravans follow the rivers, but Umka is the closest thing to a unispecific region on Tharn.

Do I make Umka sound grim? Not in summer! At the solstice, the north shore of Umka comes alive. Mamooks from around the pole gather for one of the world's largest chong-mas--a music festival, a competition, and a marriage market all in one, where mamooks of both sexes try to impress potential mates with ballads and drum-stories. The plain thunders for miles...

Those pink areas northwest of the Sea are another Tharnian oddity. The prevailing winds are off the polar cap, but when a dry "storm" rolls in off the P'droma Desert, fine red dust drops on the ice. This can create a salmon-colored stain. But the unnatural pink you see is a further step: bacterial staining. Anyone in sunny snow country where pits develop in melting snowbanks has seen patches and streaks of such bacteria, but on Tharn these colonies, nourished by the dust, can run for miles. I've often wondered if some of the vivid colors in the "topo terrains" near the poles of Mars are bacterial (admittedly, any bacteria there face radiation and cold much worse than Tharn's).

On the south shore of Umka is the Yamfit Delta. The Yamfit is probably the longest river on Tharn. The West Yamfit rises in the arcuate Roop Range; the East Yamfit, in the long parallel ridges of central Thuvia. Both branches of the upper Yamfit are alpine; only the lower stretches near their confluence and in the Delta have boreal forest.

Other rivers feed the Umka Sea; the shallow, braided, treeless Umka feeds a narrow strip of relatively green tundra north of the Sea, before the ice begins. And down from the eastern rim of Thuvia flows the wooded Yoee River.

I hope that name sounds familiar. For up the Yoee River, over the divide, the land drops away into a canyon rivaling Mariner on Mars: Mrr Trench. And standing in that red pass, under a starry indigo sky despite the copper noon sun, you look seven miles down into that winding river of turquoise air, and you recognize the lake in its depths. Lake Yoee, home of the lebbirds. You've circumnavigated Tharn. Circumambulated, I mean.

Not that it was that far--at this latitude, a mere twelve thousand km (7500 mi). Many mamooks and a few camaroos walk around the world every year. The first person on record was a centah who did it in a single summer, on foot... on a bar bet. Not an organized quest for treasure or empire, not a caravan or expedition, just a casual individual out for fun and free ale. Sholika never worried she might fall off the edge of the planet. Tharn's not a planet--just a moon, with curvature so sharp it's obvious even to the flightless. So she loped around the world in sixty days! True, they were long Tharnian days, but still... not quite like Magellan's feat!

And yet, and yet... if you see Tharn as small, remind yourself: no seas girdling the world, no ship or train or plane to ride. Sholike walked around her world. And except for trade caravans, you still must travel Tharn on your own power, measured against your own body. And suddenly even this small world feels a lot bigger--bigger, in this aspect, than Earth has been for us since the Bronze Age.

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