This has been driving me nuts for years.
I read this story, probably in the '70s, in one of the old SF compendium magazines.
It was about a boy growing up on a planet where people were born, grew up, and died within about a week (I want to say 5 days but I'm not sure about that).
There was something silver on a far hillside but nobody in the society knew what it was as it would take up to much of their limited lives to go there and figure out what it was. He decided to go there, found a space ship, went inside and in the filtered air his rapid ageing stopped. It turned out that they were humans that landed on the planet, went to investigate it, started ageing, and their descendants rapidly forgot their history.
Anybody remember it?
Thanks, David.
I read this story, probably in the '70s, in one of the old SF compendium magazines.
It was about a boy growing up on a planet where people were born, grew up, and died within about a week (I want to say 5 days but I'm not sure about that).
There was something silver on a far hillside but nobody in the society knew what it was as it would take up to much of their limited lives to go there and figure out what it was. He decided to go there, found a space ship, went inside and in the filtered air his rapid ageing stopped. It turned out that they were humans that landed on the planet, went to investigate it, started ageing, and their descendants rapidly forgot their history.
Anybody remember it?
Thanks, David.