Starting Over: Nerites
Copyright© 2025 by Quantum Mechanic
Appendix II: Nerites - Planetary Summary
Science Fiction Sex Story: Appendix II: Nerites - Planetary Summary - Cheyenne is a plains world dedicated to production of livestock for sale to other human-occupied planets. Jean has a great job there, but he's offered a better job on a watery planet, and an opportunity to develop his own homestead. In order to take the new job, he has to uproot and transplant his young family. It's not easy going, and once there, the troubles have just begun.
Caution: This Science Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Romantic Heterosexual Fiction Science Fiction Cheating Massage Oral Sex Pregnancy Slow
Appendix II
Nerites Fact Sheet
(Source: Encyclopedia Cosmorum)
General Information:
e Eridani c today is a Class 4 planet, and the planetary capital is called Poliniriton. In strict terms the government there - the Planetary Development Authority (PDA) - is effectively an oligarchy: its authority established by a corporate charter granted by the Commonwealth. Because of that, there is no defined planetary citizenship, and no laws establishing or protecting civil rights beyond those provided by general Commonwealth law. Superficially, the lives of the planet’s inhabitants seem little different from those on other worlds, but legally, their status is more like that of employees and contractors than citizens; and beyond basic human rights, their rights and responsibilities are limited to those enumerated in the corporate by-laws and the terms of their individual contracts, if any. Colonization in earnest began circa 3024 CE; but before that, most human inhabitants on the planet and in its nearby space were those involved in terraforming.
The planet was one of the first extra-Solar, earth-type (rocky) planets investigated by physical survey (circa 2090 CE). It is the second planet circling its primary, in terms of both its orbit and its discovery; and although it has a slightly larger diameter than Earth, its core and mantle are believed to be somewhat deficient in heavy elements. If ever proven, the resulting lower overall density would explain its somewhat smaller gravitational acceleration (about 0.9 g).
Its primary is also slightly smaller than Sol (0.8 M_☉), and being in spectral class K2V, its emission spectrum tends to the more reddish hues. The deficiencies of blues and violets in the primary’s light causes the deepest water bodies on Nerites to exhibit darker shades than are usually expected on worlds inhabited by humans. This is rarely noticed, though, because there are very few areas on the planet where the waters are deep enough to manifest the difference. Because of the abundance of orange and red components in the light, sunsets tend toward the spectacular, even without high levels of atmospheric particulate matter.
Axial inclination is less than 0.0035 radians, resulting in substantially and more consistently cooler polar conditions than those experienced on Old Earth. This insignificant tilt makes no detectable contribution to climatic seasonality (monsoon), which seems to be driven solely by the planet’s highly elliptic orbit. The orbit has a period (year) of roughly 294 standard (Earth) or 320 planetary days.
Prior to terraforming, the planet was sterile. The atmosphere contained large amounts of methane and oxides of nitrogen and carbon, as well as significant amounts of hydrogen sulfide and water vapor. Liquid water was abundant in the oceans, but was highly acidic. The ionic nature of these waters, coupled with the effects of atmospheric greenhouse gases, precluded the formation of ices, despite constant cold in the polar regions, and planet-wide seasonal cooling.
Today the planetary surface is largely shallow ocean, which explains the choice of catalog name (Nerites) selected by the Planetary Development Authority (PDA), with many clusters of islands built during the terraforming process. There is very little of what could be called “open water”, due to the density of these clusters. The sizes of the individual islands, excluding the myriad of “hummocks” abounding in the shallows, approximate a Gaussian distribution, mostly between 0.1 and 200 hectares.
The only significant land features are four large islands, each about 16 million square kilometers in size. The placement of these largest land features appears anomalous. They lie in the planetary temperate zones, two in the north, two in the south, and are equally spaced relative to the planetary equator. If it were not for the planetary globe obscuring the fact, the positions of these large islands would approximate a regular tetrahedron.
There are also corresponding deep-water areas in each temperate zone, lying exactly halfway between the large islands. Taken together with the large islands, the placement of these features seems somewhat artificial, and popular opinion has it that it was an unplanned consequence of the terraforming process. There is, however, no known documentation supporting this viewpoint.
Terraforming began approximately 2600 CE, despite the massive (and expensive) failures represented by previous efforts on Luna, Mars, and Venus. Historians attribute the success at Nerites to early recognition and acceptance by the Planetary Development Authority (PDA) of the physical and temporal limitations inherent in the process. Others attribute it to the PDA’s lack of a profit motive, and consequent longer-term planning.
The first and most important decision made by the PDA was to neutralize the corrosive planetary atmosphere and oceans. It was simple chemistry, but it took thirty years of harvesting asteroids, and dropping them on the planet, to get enough caustic material into the air and oceans. It took another fifty years for the reactions to proceed to completion, and in the process, lay down the thick beds of gypsum and carbonate marl that characterize the ocean beds today. But the PDA had time: literally, all the time in the world.
Following successful reduction of environmental corrosivity, the PDA landed several study groups to analyze and cooperatively design a biosphere for the planet. The groups’ findings convinced PDA management that organisms should be introduced in a series of steps, mimicking the order in which species were thought to have evolved on Old Earth. The governing board agreed, with some reservations: they flatly refused to authorize introduction of any organisms that might become a significant threat to human populations, and they required that each animal species must be individually justified and approved. The ecologists, of course, took great umbrage against the insult to their professional skills, and bureaucratic war ensued. Again, though, the PDA had time.
Changes in the ionic balance in the planet’s water eventually allowed the formation of permanent polar ice caps. The formation of these ice caps caused a small drop in sea level, but nothing of any consequence. Species were introduced with all deliberate speed, and after nearly five hundred years of careful planning and execution, Nerites became reasonably habitable.
One of the more striking, if accidental, consequences of the terraforming process, is the presence of two moons. Prior to terraforming, Nerites had no moon, and thus no lunar tides.
The bioengineers determined that unmodified Earth stock of aquatic and marine organisms would not thrive without stronger and more frequent tides than were provided by the gravitational attraction of the primary. As a result of these findings, the PDA authorized the construction of a moon, using asteroids that were chemically unsuitable for providing necessary adjustments to the planet itself.
No one was really in charge of managing moon construction, so it just sort of happened the way an open dump happens. Anything inbound which was not usable on the planet surface was simply diverted to the accreting moon. Someone got careless, and sent one particularly massive asteroid to the infant moon without properly adjusting its speed or trajectory, and the result is now two moons, of nearly identical size, orbiting each other while their center of mass orbits Nerites exactly every twenty-eight local days. Of course the mutual orbit of the moons, relative to each other, began to decay immediately, and it is expected that they will eventually (in some ten to twenty thousand years) again merge into a single body. That will be a spectacular event.
Ecology/Environment:
As a terraformed planet, Nerites has no “natural” environment to preserve and protect. It does, however, have a very comfortable and desirable, self-sustaining man-made environment.
The PDA planned for comfortable human habitation of the planet from the very start. The design incorporated such factors as a physical environment that appealed to all human senses; an ecology that would sustain human life with minimal energy investment; and the opportunity for human inhabitants to have as much or as little contact with others of their kind as they wished.
The terraforming process established an atmosphere on Nerites is slighter richer in oxygen than that of Earth. Without the presence of heavy industry, and with no history of intense uses of fossil fuels, the particulate loading of its atmosphere is relatively low. One result of this is that, except in the rainy season, there aren’t many clouds in the sky.
Speaking of the rainy season, climate on Nerites is controlled almost exclusively by the planet’s orbit. The orbit is highly elliptic, and on the outbound leg, as the planet moves away from its primary, the average planetary temperature drops just enough to force the advent of major, extended precipitation. The rains usually stop just after aphelion, skies clear, and the rising temperatures allow the ocean to restock the atmosphere with water vapor.
In the temperate zones, Nerites’ air temperature is never too warm for long sleeves, nor too cold for short sleeves. Extreme temperatures do manifest at the equator and poles. Those areas are habitable only during specific, short periods, and only by employing special survival equipment.
All organisms on Nerites are derived of Old Earth, either as direct transplants or as genetically engineered stock, and given the physical geography of the planet, the nature of the vegetative cover shouldn’t be surprising. Think Florida. Mangrove swamps, saw grass, juncus and spartina, eelgrass ... just about any submerged or emergent plant species you could find in a subtropical climate on Earth. Dunes dressed in sea oats, pennywort, wild grapes and palms, just for starters. Uplands with covered in pine, oak, cottonwood, and poplar, as well as fruit and nut trees, along with a healthy mix of shrubbery.
The oldest food chain on Nerites, as on Earth, is aquatic. Some earth species couldn’t handle the shallow seas, and if they still exist on Nerites, they’re probably hiding in one or more of the oceanic rifts. A healthy diversity of species did survive however, even some anadromous species, which were able to spawn in the streams running off the uplands of the largest islands.
The only reptiles allowed on Nerites to date are a few species of anoles, turtles, and tortoises. Selected insects, amphibians and birds make up the largest portion of the remaining terrestrial “wild” fauna.
The bulk of mammals present are carefully monitored ruminant herds which are managed for hunting or raised for meat; and a small selection of felines and canines for which populations are carefully managed. Some mammal species, such as sheep, swine and most rodents, are absolutely forbidden for live import, much less for release. The PDA has tabled the import of cetacean and/or pinnipeds until fish and mollusk stocks have grown large enough to allow it, to avoid negatively impacting existing aquaculture harvests.
When challenged concerning the lack of large and endangered Earth predators on Nerites, the PDA issued this response:
“The principal purpose for terraforming Nerites was, and remains, to provide a safe, comfortable, pleasant environment for the conduct of human life. We establish and maintain a variety of plant and animal species for production of food, fiber, and forestry products as well as for recreation, and emotional support; but we are not a zoo, nor are we a gene bank for endangered species.
“Most transportation on Nerites involves travel on water, and at a planetary level, travel on water almost invariably leads to some number of marooned survivors. Those survivors should not need to be in fear for their lives because of predators that could be dangerous to humans. There are other worlds on which one may visit and observe such species.”
Economy:
There is no significant heavy manufacturing on Nerites. Nearly all farm equipment, aircraft, boats, and terrestrial vehicles all have to be imported, at great cost. The lack of large, rich deposits of heavy elements in the planetary crust makes mining prohibitively expensive, even were the PDA inclined to allow it - which they are not. The extant light manufacturing capacity is barely sufficient to meet the needs of the local market, so shipping these goods off-planet is prohibited.