Loftbladders such as these are filled with sunstuff to make them lighter than the loft around them.
Sunstuff, or Loftmote, is the second of the firststuffs. Its token is He.
The name Sunstuff is from its being laid bare in the Sun, in 1868, by Norman Lockyer and Edward Frankland, who found it by its rainbowmarks in sunlight ere it was ever found on Earth. The other name, Loftmote, is from its main brookness, the lifting of airships and loftbladders.
Sunstuff comes in two abiding samesteads: 3He and 4He. The meaner of these is 4He, which has two firstbits and two evenmotes in its kernel. The much scarcer 3He has two firstbits, but only one evenmote. While Sunstuff is rare on Earth, it is found secondmost after waterstuff in the heavens, it having been made in the big bang alongside waterstuff.
Sunstuff cannot be found in the loftseas of the Earth or other stony worlds; it is shed into the heavens for its lightness. Instead it must be found underground, where it is given off by lightrotting ores. For most of the twentieth hundredyear, only the Banded Folkdoms had weighty lodes of sunstuff, but nearer to nowtide, Algeria and Qatar have found lodes of their own, and now wrestle with the Banded Folkdoms for sunstuff's world trade.
