Four-Day Planet

On Fenris, the sun doesn't rise so much as linger for weeks, turning the planet into a brutal crucible before plunging it into darkness for months more. The colonists who survived became something hard: practical, stubborn, unwilling to bend. When prospector Felix Dvorak finally strikes it rich on this unforgiving world, he expects to finally live like a king. Instead, he discovers the company that holds his contract has been stealing from him all along, redirecting the wealth he's bled for into the pockets of men who've never felt real heat. The law won't help him. The company owns the law. So Dvorak does what Fenris breeds: he fights back, and he refuses to lose. H. Beam Piper builds a story about one man against a system, but it's really about what happens when you push people too far on a world where survival already takes everything you've got. It's a lean, propulsive tale of frontier justice that still feels urgent decades later.