Location from Dune by Frank Herbert
The desert planet — sole source of the spice melange, where colossal sandworms patrol endless dunes and the Fremen wage a hidden war for survival beneath the burning sky.
The heat arrives first — a wall of dry furnace air that sucks moisture from exposed skin within minutes. Then the smell: ozone, dust, and the faint cinnamon undertone of spice carried on the wind. The silence of the deep desert is absolute until broken by the bass rumble of a worm moving beneath the surface, a vibration felt in the chest before it reaches the ears. Sand hisses constantly, grain against grain, a white noise that Fremen stop hearing after childhood. During the day the sand is hot enough to blister bare feet through boot soles. Static electricity crackles between dune crests before storms. When a coriolis storm hits, the sky turns brown-black and wind-driven sand strips flesh from bone at 700 kilometers per hour. Nothing survives in the open. But at dawn and dusk, Arrakis transforms. The light goes amber and gold, shadows stretch for kilometers, and the desert achieves a terrible beauty that has broken the resolve of stronger men than you. The spice blow — a geyser of melange erupting from pre-spice mass deep underground — paints the air cinnamon-orange and draws sandworms from hundreds of kilometers away. This is the planet that controls the universe, and it does not care.
An ocean of sand stretching to every horizon, broken only by rock outcroppings and the dark smudge of the Shield Wall. The sky is a washed-out bronze during the day, deepening to indigo at dusk. No clouds. No green. Dunes rise hundreds of meters, their crests sculpted by coriolis winds into razor edges that shift overnight. The surface ripples with heat distortion so severe that distant rocks appear to float. At night, two small moons cast overlapping shadows across the sand sea.
Also known as: Dune, Desert Planet, the Spice World, Rakis