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66-398: These stories were written by Piper: Sequels not written by Piper and mainly written by John F. Carr : Some persons dispute He Walked Around The Horses and Genesis being Paratime stories, however Genesis is the account of a group of Martian colonists arriving on Earth between 75,000 and 100,000 years ago exactly as described by Piper in several of his Paratime Police stories. All of

132-691: A Stone Age culture having evolved on Earth independently, but never advanced. The means of traveling through timelines is a flying saucer -shaped "conveyor" using the Ghaldron-Hesthor field generator, which was developed via a fortuitous fusion of attempts to develop faster than light space travel with ones attempting to explain certain psychic phenomena. Conveyors are fixed in place, which means that as they travel through timelines, they may end up inside nuclear reactors or other hazards or be caught in warfare (a common activity on at least one timeline in nearly every trip, Paratimers note). Weakening of

198-640: A colonel of scouts. By the time of Great Kings' War , Vall has taken over as Chief of the Paratime Police, replacing the newly retired Tortha Karff. Hadron Dalla is a psychical researcher and has been married to Verkan Vall twice. On the home timeline, she is a member of Rhogom Memorial Foundation of Psychic Science in Dhergabar. Dalla traveled to the Akor-Neb sector to continue research, where she discovered evidence that human consciousness survives

264-605: A hideout of a crime organization that traded slaves across timelines. In the Second Level, the colony succeeded, but there were intermittent periods of Dark Ages between civilizations. The Akor-Neb civilization of Last Enemy is Second Level; its technology is almost identical to the Home Timeline except for paratemporal transposition. The culture there has legends or records of their Martian origins. The Jak-Hakka civilization follows an ideology of "Dictatorship of

330-611: A nuclear battery to 200 degrees Celsius . A commonly used curse by Verkan Vall is "By the Fangs of Fasif" referring to the religion common in the Kiftan Sector. Third Level timelines, as Piper described them, were "A few survivors—a shipload or so—were left to shift for themselves while the parent civilization on Mars died out. They lost all vestiges of their original Martian culture, even memory of their extraterrestrial origin." Some Third Level timelines have developed space travel;

396-508: A paratemporal slave-trading ring in Time Crime . (In Home Timeline usage, family names precede personal names.) The Abzar Sector is one where the survivors exhausted the resources of Earth and exterminated each other in a series of wars. Apparently the Home Timeline was only saved from a similar outcome by the discovery of paratime travel, which allowed it to exploit the resources of other timelines. Some Abzar Sector timelines were used as

462-510: A relative scale not an absolute scale. For example, an object at 20 °C does not have twice the energy of when it is 10 °C; and 0 °C is not the lowest Celsius value. Thus, degrees Celsius is a useful interval measurement but does not possess the characteristics of ratio measures like weight or distance. In science and in engineering, the Celsius and Kelvin scales are often used in combination in close contexts, e.g. "a measured value

528-690: A right angle) in the French and Spanish languages. The risk of confusion between temperature and angular measurement was eliminated in 1948 when the 9th meeting of the General Conference on Weights and Measures and the Comité International des Poids et Mesures (CIPM) formally adopted "degree Celsius" for temperature. While "Celsius" is commonly used in scientific work, "centigrade" is still used in French and English-speaking countries, especially in informal contexts. The frequency of

594-473: A sequence of U+00B0 ° DEGREE SIGN + U+0043 C LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C , rather than U+2103 ℃ DEGREE CELSIUS . For searching, treat these two sequences as identical." The degree Celsius is subject to the same rules as the kelvin with regard to the use of its unit name and symbol. Thus, besides expressing specific temperatures along its scale (e.g. " Gallium melts at 29.7646 °C" and "The temperature outside

660-675: A specific point on the Celsius temperature scale or to a difference or range between two temperatures. It is named after the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius (1701–1744), who proposed the first version of it in 1742. The unit was called centigrade in several languages (from the Latin centum , which means 100, and gradus , which means steps) for many years. In 1948, the International Committee for Weights and Measures renamed it to honor Celsius and also to remove confusion with

726-477: A subsistence agriculture economy to survive. The culture is pacifistic and nonaggressive, though Dwarma peoples eat meat. One major event people remembered for years is when a farmer and trader contradicted themselves on the price of a pig; they raised their voices and shouted at each other. Verkan Vall and Hadron Dalla were planning a vacation in the Dwarma Sector when it was interrupted by the discovering of

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792-476: Is 23 degrees Celsius"), the degree Celsius is also suitable for expressing temperature intervals : differences between temperatures or their uncertainties (e.g. "The output of the heat exchanger is hotter by 40 degrees Celsius", and "Our standard uncertainty is ±3 °C"). Because of this dual usage, one must not rely upon the unit name or its symbol to denote that a quantity is a temperature interval; it must be unambiguous through context or explicit statement that

858-532: Is a member of the nobility of the Home Timeline, able to style himself His Valor, the Mavrad of Nerros, though he does not and often forgets he has a title. (This indicates that a mavrad is approximately equivalent to a duke .) Vall's Paratime Police position is Special Assistant to the Chief of the Paratime Police, Tortha Karff's personal roving inspector. He serves as a general troubleshooter for Chief Tortha Karf and

924-562: Is assigned to cases that require special attention from the Paratime Police. In Police Operation , he has to hunt down a Venusian night-hound that escaped onto our timeline; in Temple Trouble , he must rescue Home Level paratimers from torture and execution; in Last Enemy , he must locate researcher Hadron Dalla; and in Time Crime , he is in charge of an investigation to track down a large criminal organization of slave traders. At

990-481: Is called Vall by his friends, Hadron Dalla is known as Dalla to her friends and so on. It is also the case that nearly all male names have a two-syllable family name and a one-syllable personal name. Verkan Vall was born on the island of Nerros ( Cuba ) in the Home Timeline some time in the late 1800s; in Last Enemy , he noted he was eighty when he and Dalla Hadron were first married. He is described as having "handsome regularity of his strangely immobile features." He

1056-650: Is more important than one outtimer's life. Sometimes they stumble out of the conveyor onto another timeline: this could have happened to British diplomat Benjamin Bathurst in He Walked Around the Horses (Note: This "could" is almost a certainty since the details of the story of such an occurrence that Tortha Karf tells in Police Operation match exactly the events in this story) or to the stranger on

1122-427: Is the author of seven published novels and, along with co-editor Jerry Pournelle , he has edited over twenty theme anthologies and short story collections. He is also an authority on the life and works of H. Beam Piper and his biography H. Beam Piper: A Biography , was published in 2008. His other works include the space opera The Ophidian Conspiracy and several novels (some co-written with Roland J. Green ) set in

1188-601: Is the home of the Paratime civilization. This is the only known timeline with paratime travel capacity, and protection of the Paratime Secret is the highest priority. Venus and Mars are also colonized by the Home Timeline (or in the case of Mars, reclaimed), and paratime transport exists there as well. The Dwarma sector is one where paratime travel was never discovered, and the Martian colonists settled down into

1254-523: The Lyonnais physicist Jean-Pierre Christin , permanent secretary of the Academy of Lyon , inverted the Celsius temperature scale so that 0 represented the freezing point of water and 100 represented the boiling point of water. Some credit Christin for independently inventing the reverse of Celsius's original scale, while others believe Christin merely reversed Celsius's scale. On 19 May 1743 he published

1320-455: The Paratime plots nearly all "rely on the self-sufficient human. This type of person, nearly always male, uses inner strength to pull through situations that weaker persons cannot survive". The Guide notes Piper's expertise for exploring "'what if' history" the Paratime stories. Karen Hellekson explains that "Piper divides his worlds into levels, based on their proximity and likeness to

1386-485: The Paratime universe of H. Beam Piper). He is also recognized as an editor, having edited numerous collections or series involving Libertarian science fiction and Military science fiction . He is best known for working with Jerry Pournelle. In 2002, Carr and Pournelle were honored with a Prometheus Award for editing The Survival of Freedom . Carr's Pequod Press released Fuzzy Ergo Sum (2011) and "Caveat Fuzzy" (2012) by Wolfgang Diehr. These novels pick up where

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1452-753: The Aryan-Transpacific sector, the Aryans moved east, through Asia into North America (the Minor Land Mass); one timeline in Aryan-Transpacific is the setting of Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen . After Piper's death, three additional books have been written based in this universe. The Proto Aryan Sector had the Aryan migration occur 1500 years later than in our sector, where the presence of established Sumerian and Nile civilizations inhibited their migration. Near our timeline are timelines where there

1518-599: The Caribbean Islands, who were reputed to be the best fighters in all paratime. In Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen , Vall investigates the wounding of a Paratime Policeman by Calvin Morrison and determines whether or not Calvin should die or live. He decides that Morrison is no threat to the Paratime Secret, though he must have deduced it. Vall takes occasional service with the Morrison-led army of Hos-Hostigos as

1584-417: The Celsius symbol at code point U+2103 ℃ DEGREE CELSIUS . However, this is a compatibility character provided for roundtrip compatibility with legacy encodings. It easily allows correct rendering for vertically written East Asian scripts, such as Chinese. The Unicode standard explicitly discourages the use of this character: "In normal use, it is better to represent degrees Celsius '°C' with

1650-452: The Chosen," it has been used as an example of political structures the Home Timeline wishes to avoid. The Khiftan sector is one whose cultures are brutal and violent. Their cities are low domes, for protection against nuclear blasts; the priesthood of Fasif punishes blasphemy with torture; and an example of Khiftan craftsmanship seen in Time Crime is a whip, the tip of which can be heated by

1716-481: The Esaron civilization developed space travel before it developed the germ theory of disease and suffered a great setback when Venusian microbial life killed off most of the population. The Caribbean islands of this sector are overrun with pirates reported to be the best knife fighters in all of Paratime. Verkan Vall learned his knife fighting technique from them. The Fourth Level is the level of highest probability:

1782-402: The Home Timeline civilization must ever know about paratime travel. The Paratime Transposition Code sets out legal penalties for this, as well as other crimes involving paratime, such as kidnapping and enslavement. Paratime Police officers are authorized to use extrajudiciary means, such as assassination, of both Home Time residents or outtimes, to protect the secret if necessary. This action is at

1848-518: The Home Timeline hold a reserve commission as Paratime officers, and are expected to activate their powers when needed. The Chief of the Paratime Police at the beginning of the series is Tortha Karf. Special Chief's Assistant Verkan Vall is the protagonist of most of the Paratime stories. All persons in the Paratime stories have names where the family name is first, somewhat similar to usage in Asiatic cultures in our timeline. For example, Verkan Vall

1914-400: The Home Timeline, overall, believe themselves to be scientific rationalists , otherwise known as Rational Empiricists , and atheists . Their calendar numbers days of the year rather than months. The Home Timeline's capital city apparently is Dhergabar, as is the home of many of its prominent scientific and cultural institutions. Based on clues in the stories, Dhergabar seems to be located in

1980-546: The actual boiling point of water, the value "100 °C" is hotter than 0 °C – in absolute terms – by a factor of exactly ⁠ 373.15 / 273.15 ⁠ (approximately 36.61% thermodynamically hotter). When adhering strictly to the two-point definition for calibration, the boiling point of VSMOW under one standard atmosphere of pressure was actually 373.1339 K (99.9839 °C). When calibrated to ITS-90 (a calibration standard comprising many definition points and commonly used for high-precision instrumentation),

2046-419: The agent's discretion. Another method to protect the Paratime Secret involves spreading uncertainty and doubt about accounts of encountering paratimers. In the case of pre-scientific cultures, this is easier; actions can be explained as acts of the gods. In our timeline, in which the concept of alternate realities is common, the Paratime Police have spread stories which are implausible when investigated; however,

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2112-452: The body and reincarnation is a scientific fact; this research led to a major upset of Akor-Neb politics and societal structure, and forced Verkan Vall to retrieve her lest the Paratime Secret be disclosed (see Last Enemy ). Dalla remarries Vall. Before they can go on a vacation on the Dwarma sector, Vall is called to investigate a gang of paratime slave traders; Dalla goes along with him on

2178-465: The boiling point of VSMOW was slightly less, about 99.974 °C. This boiling-point difference of 16.1 millikelvins between the Celsius temperature scale's original definition and the previous one (based on absolute zero and the triple point) has little practical meaning in common daily applications because water's boiling point is very sensitive to variations in barometric pressure . For example, an altitude change of only 28 cm (11 in) causes

2244-405: The caldarium (the hot part of the greenhouse) by the angle of the windows, merely from the rays of the sun, obtains such heat that the thermometer often reaches 30 degrees, although the keen gardener usually takes care not to let it rise to more than 20 to 25 degrees, and in winter not under 15 degrees   ... Since the 19th century, the scientific and thermometry communities worldwide have used

2310-498: The definition, they became measured quantities instead. This is also true of the triple point. In 1948 when the 9th General Conference on Weights and Measures ( CGPM ) in Resolution 3 first considered using the triple point of water as a defining point, the triple point was so close to being 0.01 °C greater than water's known melting point, it was simply defined as precisely 0.01 °C. However, later measurements showed that

2376-406: The design of a mercury thermometer , the "Thermometer of Lyon" built by the craftsman Pierre Casati that used this scale. In 1744, coincident with the death of Anders Celsius, the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) reversed Celsius's scale. His custom-made "Linnaeus-thermometer", for use in his greenhouses, was made by Daniel Ekström, Sweden's leading maker of scientific instruments at

2442-469: The difference between the triple and melting points of VSMOW is actually very slightly (< 0.001 °C) greater than 0.01 °C. Thus, the actual melting point of ice is very slightly (less than a thousandth of a degree) below 0 °C. Also, defining water's triple point at 273.16 K precisely defined the magnitude of each 1 °C increment in terms of the absolute thermodynamic temperature scale (referencing absolute zero). Now decoupled from

2508-529: The end of Time Crime Vall is promoted to Chief of Duplicate Paratime Police, a new system set up on Police Terminal to seek out and destroy large organized crime syndicates operating across Paratime like the Organization described in Time Crime . Vall is a crack shot with either hand (like most Paratimers, he is ambidextrous) and learned knife fighting from the Third Level Khanga pirates of

2574-542: The general vicinity of our timeline's India - Malaysia , some three hours travel by rocket from the east coast of North America over the North Pole . The government of the Home Timeline, the "Management", is a parliamentary system. Many of the inhabitants of the Service Sector, as well as servants and low-status workers in Home Timeline, are Fourth Level tribesmen from primitive cultures who are recruited by

2640-490: The home time line", meaning the time line of the people who know how to move between parallel worlds. She explains this as a useful technique for developing the alternative histories of the story. Hellekson compares Paratime to Frederik Pohl 's The Coming of the Quantum Cats , describing similarities in the approach to parallel timelines, as well as some meaningful differences including the fact that Pohl doesn't use

2706-513: The instrument maker; and Mårten Strömer (1707–1770) who had studied astronomy under Anders Celsius. The first known Swedish document reporting temperatures in this modern "forward" Celsius temperature scale is the paper Hortus Upsaliensis dated 16 December 1745 that Linnaeus wrote to a student of his, Samuel Nauclér. In it, Linnaeus recounted the temperatures inside the orangery at the University of Uppsala Botanical Garden : ...   since

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2772-566: The investigation. Her skills as a psychic researcher and investigator are highly valuable to the investigation, and she becomes a member of the Paratime Police. Dalla goes with Vall to the kingdom of Hos-Hostigos in Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen , serving as a second pair of eyes and a companion to Princess Rylla, who becomes Morrison's wife. This disturbs Vall a little bit; he regards the two women as two identical sticks of dynamite, believing that whatever sort of trouble one of them didn't think of,

2838-443: The lowest temperature, is now defined as being exactly 0 K and −273.15 °C. In 1742, Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius (1701–1744) created a temperature scale that was the reverse of the scale now known as "Celsius": 0 represented the boiling point of water, while 100 represented the freezing point of water. In his paper Observations of two persistent degrees on a thermometer , he recounted his experiments showing that

2904-595: The melting point of ice is essentially unaffected by pressure. He also determined with remarkable precision how the boiling point of water varied as a function of atmospheric pressure. He proposed that the zero point of his temperature scale, being the boiling point, would be calibrated at the mean barometric pressure at mean sea level. This pressure is known as one standard atmosphere . The BIPM 's 10th General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) in 1954 defined one standard atmosphere to equal precisely 1,013,250 dynes per square centimeter (101.325  kPa ). In 1743,

2970-590: The names used in Genesis follow the conventions used in all of the Paratime stories but not used in Piper's other stories. Additionally the events in He Walked Around The Horses are referred to by Tortha Karf in the story Police Operation where he describes the event briefly to Verkan Vall. The Reader's Guide to Twentieth-Century Science Fiction notes that, as in most of Piper's stories,

3036-501: The number of stories to investigate lessens the chance of detecting the truth. Headquarters for the Paratime Police is at the city of Dhergabar, which is the Capital city on home Timeline. There is also a separate timeline that is exclusively for the use of the Paratime Police; they can locate conveyors wherever necessary there, or commandeer private property to locate a temporary conveyor. In many timelines, business agents working from

3102-520: The only SI unit whose full unit name contains an uppercase letter since 1967, when the SI base unit for temperature became the kelvin , replacing the capitalized term degrees Kelvin . The plural form is "degrees Celsius". The general rule of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) is that the numerical value always precedes the unit, and a space is always used to separate

3168-600: The original series by H. Beam Piper left off, continuing the story of Little Fuzzy and his fuzzy and human companions. Celsius The degree Celsius is the unit of temperature on the Celsius temperature scale (originally known as the centigrade scale outside Sweden), one of two temperature scales used in the International System of Units (SI), the other being the closely related Kelvin scale . The degree Celsius (symbol: °C ) can refer to

3234-561: The other would. At the beginning of the series, Tortha Karf is a man entering middle age at 290; he is beginning to become overweight and having gray hair. John F. Carr John Francis Carr (born December 25, 1944) is an American science fiction editor and writer as well as the executor of the literary estate of H. Beam Piper . Carr was born in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , and raised in San Diego, California . He

3300-431: The phrase "centigrade scale" and temperatures were often reported simply as "degrees" or, when greater specificity was desired, as "degrees centigrade", with the symbol °C. In the French language, the term centigrade also means one hundredth of a gradian , when used for angular measurement . The term centesimal degree was later introduced for temperatures but was also problematic, as it means gradian (one hundredth of

3366-579: The probabilities of success of an attempt by Martians to colonize Earth 75,000 to 100,000 years ago; humans, on timelines where they are present, are the descendants of the Martian colonists. Timelines with points of divergence before the Martian colonization attempt are not discussed. This is the level of complete success of the Martian colonization. However, in this level are several sectors of several thousand timelines each: Home Timeline, and its associated Fifth Level Commercial, Fifth Level Passenger, Fifth Level Industrial Sector, Fifth Level Service Sector,

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3432-418: The quantity is an interval. This is sometimes solved by using the symbol °C (pronounced "degrees Celsius") for a temperature, and C° (pronounced "Celsius degrees") for a temperature interval, although this usage is non-standard. Another way to express the same is "40 °C ± 3 K" , which can be commonly found in literature. Celsius measurement follows an interval system but not a ratio system ; and it follows

3498-547: The same idea of "nearness" as Piper, and that Pohl makes a heavier use of analogous characters who develop differently between timelines. Alva Rogers says the "stories were entertaining tales not intended to be taken too seriously", noting the stories attempts to answer various " Fortean mysteries". Rogers says that Piper even got the initial idea from Charles Fort . In Piper's Paratime universe, there are an infinite number of timelines , but in each timeline, events occurred differently. They are grouped into five Levels, based on

3564-482: The scientific world as the use of SI-prefixed forms of the degree Celsius (such as "μ°C" or "microdegrees Celsius") to express a temperature interval has not been widely adopted. The melting and boiling points of water are no longer part of the definition of the Celsius temperature scale. In 1948, the definition was changed to use the triple point of water . In 2005, the definition was further refined to use water with precisely defined isotopic composition ( VSMOW ) for

3630-554: The survivors lost all concept of their Martian origins and believe themselves to have developed on Earth. The Nilo-Mesopotamian cluster of sectors, including the Macedonian Empire Sector, the Alexandrian - Roman , Alexandrian- Punic , Indo- Turanian and Europo-American (which includes our own timeline), there was an Aryan invasion of Eastern Europe and Asia Minor about four thousand elapsed years ago. In

3696-523: The term for one hundredth of a gradian in some languages. Most countries use this scale (the Fahrenheit scale is still used in the United States, some island territories, and Liberia ). Throughout the 19th century, the scale was based on 0 °C for the freezing point of water and 100 °C for the boiling point of water at 1  atm pressure. (In Celsius's initial proposal,

3762-579: The time, whose workshop was located in the basement of the Stockholm observatory. As often happened in this age before modern communications, numerous physicists, scientists, and instrument makers are credited with having independently developed this same scale; among them were Pehr Elvius, the secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (which had an instrument workshop) and with whom Linnaeus had been corresponding; Daniel Ekström ,

3828-523: The train in Crossroads of Destiny as it did to Pennsylvania State Police officer Calvin Morrison in Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen . In those cases, the Paratime Police try to return them to their home timelines with memory obliteration. In other cases, such as a "Christian Avenger" of the Hitler-victory timeline, they decided he's better off dead and will let the locals do the job. The people of

3894-409: The transposition field is a concern of Paratimers. Because there are so many timelines and many conveyors, it is possible for two conveyors to "cross" each other and end up with mutually weakened fields. In this case, objects from the outside may penetrate the conveyor. Often these objects are alive. If they are people, they face two choices: be shot or have their memory obliterated. The Paratime Secret

3960-562: The tribe to work. They are not mistreated, but they do not have Citizen status, which can be granted through adoption into a Citizen family. At least two divisions of soldiers are stationed in Service Sector to deal with riots and rebellion. To supervise Paratime, the Paratime Commission exists; to enforce the Paratime Code, the Paratime Police exists. There is only one law that is totally inviolate: no one from outside

4026-484: The triple point. In 2019, the definition was changed to use the Boltzmann constant , completely decoupling the definition of the kelvin from the properties of water . Each of these formal definitions left the numerical values of the Celsius temperature scale identical to the prior definition to within the limits of accuracy of the metrology of the time. When the melting and boiling points of water ceased being part of

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4092-403: The unit from the number, e.g. "30.2 °C" (not "30.2°C" or "30.2° C"). The only exceptions to this rule are for the unit symbols for degree , minute, and second for plane angle (°, ′ , and ″, respectively), for which no space is left between the numerical value and the unit symbol. Other languages, and various publishing houses, may follow different typographical rules. Unicode provides

4158-591: The usage of "centigrade" has declined over time. Due to metrication in Australia , after 1 September 1972 weather reports in the country were exclusively given in Celsius. In the United Kingdom, it was not until February 1985 that forecasts by BBC Weather switched from "centigrade" to "Celsius". All phase transitions are at standard atmosphere . Figures are either by definition, or approximated from empirical measurements. The "degree Celsius" has been

4224-430: The values were reversed: the boiling point was 0 degrees and the freezing point was 100 degrees.) Between 1954 and 2019, the precise definitions of the unit degree Celsius and the Celsius temperature scale used absolute zero and the triple point of water. Since 2007, the Celsius temperature scale has been defined in terms of the kelvin , the SI base unit of thermodynamic temperature (symbol: K). Absolute zero ,

4290-424: Was 0.01023 °C with an uncertainty of 70 μK". This practice is permissible because the magnitude of the degree Celsius is equal to that of the kelvin. Notwithstanding the official endorsement provided by decision no. 3 of Resolution 3 of the 13th CGPM, which stated "a temperature interval may also be expressed in degrees Celsius", the practice of simultaneously using both °C and K remains widespread throughout

4356-479: Was a Second American Civil War, as well as a band where racial-based fascism rules North America as a result of a Nazi victory in 1940. The Fifth Level are those where the colonization either failed or never took place; they are empty of Martian derived human life. Piper described the Fifth level as "on some sectors Subhuman brutes...on most of it nothing even vaguely human...". Fifth level Neanderthal man exists in

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