Two minor things that had escaped my attention earlier:

(a) p.79: one of the near-rapists of Maia tells his gang: 
"Come on. You can whiff she's just a virgie. Let's go
clean up an' head for the Bell House."

Bell House? Or _Beller_ House?

(b) this is even more subtle, and might be the first
"typographical error" detected by this analysis :-)

p.83: Maia and Leie watch the Clock mark the "3/4 day" time

Some time later [some minutes, maybe less than an hour]:

p.86: "The middle moon, Athena, hung above the western
horizon, a slender crescent with the plain of Mare Virginitatis
brightnening rapidly as the sun quenched behind a bank
of sea clouds. It was a clear evening over Lanargh, with a
chill in the air. The first stars were coming out."

This is interesting, because, since Stratos has no orbital
inclination, day and night should have the same duration,
so what can explain the fact the Sun sets [say] one hour
after the "3/4 day" marked by the Clock?

But it's even worse than that: there's something the 
astronomers call "the equation of time", caused by the 
orbital eccentricity of Stratos's orbit [on Earth, it's a
combination of the small eccentricity with the huge
inclination], that relates the (real) Sun to a "mean" Sun.

During the "autumn" period, when Stratos is climbing
towards aphelium, this equation gives a positive
[real - mean] value. For example, with ecc = 0.2
Sunset would be 1 h 30 min earlier than 3/4 day
on the middle of autumn.

Alberto Monteiro


Reply via email to