Frost and Fire

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"Frost and Fire" is a short story by Ray Bradbury and the fourteenth in his collection R is for Rocket.

[edit] Plot summary

Placed there by past rocket ships, the people of the storied land are within sight of another rocket ship on a distant mountain plateau. The plot follows Sim, the protagonist of this story, and his apparently short life on a planet where people are cursed by radiation to live only eight dangerous days.

The people of this planet are also gifted with telepathic communication ability by the Sun's radiation. However, they are drawn away from the sole remaining rocket ship by the futility of attempting to venture further than the Sun their planet orbits would allow as the titual Fire from it burns them alive after a short interval.

Sim is then moved by the racial memory of his ancestors to meet with scientists who make halting progress towards the goal of moving to the Rocket in the distance, in spite of the warnings from his sister and the rest of the people in his collective mountain-cave network of telepathic humans.