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2 added 54 characters in body

Let me give another answer, even though it does not fit into Hartshorne's context:

Show that $\pi_1(\mathbb{P}^n)$ has to be abelian.

Use Kummer-Theory to relate coverings to torsion in $Pic (\mathbb{P}^n)=\mathbb{Z}$, see e.g. Milne's Etale Cohomology, Prop 4.11. This implies that there are no nontrivial étale coverings of degree prime to the base characteristic.

Then use Artin-Schreier theory to relate the rest of the coverings to $\Gamma(\mathbb{P}^n,\mathcal{O}_{\mathbb{P}^n})/(F-1)\Gamma(\mathbb{P}^n,\mathcal{O}_{\mathbb{P}^n})=0$, and $H^1(\mathbb{P}^n,\mathcal{O}_{\mathbb{P}^n})^F=0$, where $F$ is the Frobenius, see e.g. Milne's, Prop 4.12.

1

Let me give another answer, even though it does not fit into Hartshorne's context:

Use Kummer-Theory to relate coverings to torsion in $Pic (\mathbb{P}^n)=\mathbb{Z}$, see e.g. Milne's Etale Cohomology, Prop 4.11. This implies that there are no nontrivial étale coverings of degree prime to the base characteristic.

Then use Artin-Schreier theory to relate the rest of the coverings to $\Gamma(\mathbb{P}^n,\mathcal{O}_{\mathbb{P}^n})/(F-1)\Gamma(\mathbb{P}^n,\mathcal{O}_{\mathbb{P}^n})=0$, and $H^1(\mathbb{P}^n,\mathcal{O}_{\mathbb{P}^n})^F=0$, where $F$ is the Frobenius, see e.g. Milne's, Prop 4.12.