From 188 Contes à régler
Life is a nightmare from which I am afraid to wake up. ~ Louis Scutenaire
***
This small planet, barely discovered by a group of independent navigators, did not yet have a name.
This did not diminish its secret reputation. The aerial views brought back from there indeed aroused the envy of all sellers of solar vacations in dreamlike landscapes. And those of this still unnamed world exceeded in grandeur everything that the most ambitious promoters could wish for: a fascinating compromise between the charm of Ireland, the wildness of Tierra del Fuego, the luxuriance of some tropical islands, and the rugged poetry of Colorado.
In short, a golden opportunity. The Cook agency secured it after exhausting negotiations. The spacecraft carrying the agency's pioneers to Cook's planet landed exactly one year after those who had discovered this world. Enchanting and impressive, it was beyond descriptions and hopes. Not only did the landscape turn out to be a true concentration of Earth's scattered wonders, but no swarm of inhabitants marred its primitive beauty, free of shabby buildings, vegetable gardens, wastelands, and grim housing estates.
The next day, however, the Cook team experienced an unexpected disappointment. The stunning panorama of islands, coves, mountains, and lakes admired the day before were now obscured by a fog so thick that one couldn't even see the ground they were stepping on..
No one ever saw the breathtaking landscape glimpsed the day before again. Neither that one nor any other on Cook's planet. The fog did not lift during the day, nor the next day, nor the day after. It never lost its density, not even for a few minutes.
Panic spread among the team of prospectors after a few days. The fog hadn't cleared for even an hour, and the men had taken the precaution of being constantly connected to their spacecraft to ensure they could find their way back. A month later, discouraged, they abandoned the planet, feeling as though this dirty gray mist was seeping into their brains.
An absurd epic which arose from an ironic coincidence: the two Earthling spaceships, the first by chance, the second by thirst for profit, had landed on this world on the only day of the year when the mist dissipated for a whole day, only to fall again the next day, as implacable as an enormous opaque cover. And this without an hour of respite for an entire year.