H. Beam Piper
Four-Day Planet
A young reporter gets caught up in intrigue and adventure chasing tallow-wax bounties with the monster hunters on Fenris, a planet with a two-thousand-hour day and four-day year.
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Description
Reminiscent of old whaling stories, Four-Day Planet follows the story of Walter Boyd, a scrappy 17-year-old reporter working for his father at the Port Sandor Times. Walt gets tied up in the adventures of the sea-monster hunters on Fenris—a barely-habitable planet with a 2,000-hour day. The prized—and only—commodity on Fenris is tallow-wax, a miraculous material harvested from the dangerous seas of the planet.
While being set in a grand sci-fi universe, the book packs in more about intrigue, betrayal, and the grit required to survive on a backwater planet of the Federation. The book was later re-published as a “two-for-one” with Lone Star Planet (originally titled A Planet for Texans).