Introduction

In the year A.D. 3000, Earth is a barren wasteland, plundered of its natural resources by alien conquerors known as Psychlos. Fewer than thirty-five thousand humans survive in a handful of communities scattered across the face of a post-apocalyptic Earth.

From the ashes of humanity rises a young hero, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler. Setting off on an initial quest to discover a hidden evil, Jonnie unlocks the mystery of humanity’s demise and unearths a crucial weakness in their oppressors. Spreading the seeds of revolt, Jonnie and a small band of survivors pit their quest for freedom in an all-out rebellion that erupts across the continents of Earth and the cosmic sprawl of the Psychlo empire.

For the fate of the Galaxy lies on the Battlefield of Earth.

“Over 1,000 pages of thrills, spills, vicious aliens and noble humans. I found Battlefield Earth un-put-downable.”—Neil Gaiman??
“Battlefield Earth is a terrific story! The carefully underplayed comedy I found delicious. A masterpiece.”—Robert A. Heinlein
“Pulse-pounding mile-a-minute sci-fi action adventure that does not stop. It is a masterpiece of popular adventure science fiction.”—Brandon Sanderson
“Space opera that hits the right notes. It's provocative, exhilarating and genuinely enjoyable.”—SCIFI.COM??

Awards and Accolades: Top 100 science fiction books

• Top three of the best 100 English language novels of  the 20th century by the Random House Modern Library Readers Poll

•  US Golden Scroll and Saturn Awards

•  Tetradramma d'Oro Award

•  Gutenberg Award

Read the novel that changed the shape of science fiction

* Over 4,000,000 copies sold * Translated in 25 languages * 21st Century edition with expanded content: author's never-before-published handwritten notes & an exclusive author interview

An engaging read for STEM learning

The imaginative diversity of the novel's characters and alien races, its military artifacts and striking technologies and mathematics make it the perfect motivation for STEM learning. "Want to get your kid excited about STEM? Battlefield Earth will give you the talking points, in fact, they'll already be talking about it." —S.G. Educator

•  Accelerated Reader level 5.8, students earn 62 points

•  Lexile 780

•  Discussion guide available for book clubs and educators

Editorial Review

No editorial review at this time.

Excerpt

PART 1

1

“Man,” said Terl, “is an endangered species.”

The hairy paws of the Chamco brothers hung suspended above the broad keys of the laser-bash game. The cliffs of Char’s eyebones drew down over his yellow orbs as he looked up in mystery. Even the steward, who had been padding quietly about picking up her saucepans, lumbered to a halt and stared.

Terl could not have produced a more profound effect had he thrown a meat-girl naked into the middle of the room.

The clear dome of the Intergalactic Mining Company employee recreation hall shone black around and above them, silvered at its crossbars by the pale glow of the Earth’s single moon, half full on this late summer night.

Terl lifted his large amber eyes from the tome that rested minutely in his massive claws and looked around the room. He was suddenly aware of the effect he had produced, and it amused him. Anything to relieve the humdrum monotony of a ten-year* duty tour in this gods-abandoned mining camp, way out here on the edge of a minor galaxy.

___________

*Time, distance and weight have been translated in all cases throughout this book to old Earth time, distance and weight systems for the sake of uniformity and to prevent confusion in the various systems employed by the Psychlos. —Translator

In an even more professorial voice, already deep and roaring enough, Terl repeated his thought. “Man is an endangered species.”

Char glowered at him. “What in the name of diseased crap are you reading?”

Terl did not much care for his tone. After all, Char was simply one of several mine managers, but he, Terl, was chief of minesite security. “I didn’t read it. I thought it.”

“You must’ve got it from somewhere,” growled Char. “What is that book?”

Terl held it up so Char could see its back. It said General Report of Geological Minesites, Volume 250,369. Like all such books, it was huge but printed on material that made it almost weightless, particularly on a low-gravity planet such as Earth, a triumph of design and manufacture that did not cut heavily into the payloads of freighters.

“Rughr,” growled Char in disgust. “That must be two, three hundred Earth-years old. If you want to prowl around in books, I got an up-to-date general board of directors’ report that says we’re thirty-five freighters behind in bauxite deliveries.”

The Chamco brothers looked at each other and then at their game to see where they had gotten to in shooting down the live mayflies in the air box. But Terl’s next words distracted them again.

“Today,” said Terl, brushing Char’s push for work aside, “I got a sighting report from a recon drone that recorded only thirty-five men in that valley near that peak.” Terl waved his paw westward toward the towering mountain range silhouetted by the moon.

“So?” said Char.

“So I dug up the books out of curiosity. There used to be hundreds in that valley. And furthermore,” continued Terl with his professorial ways coming back, “there used to be thousands and thousands of them on this planet.”

“You can’t believe all you read,” said Char heavily. “On my last duty tour—it was Arcturus IV—”

“This book,” said Terl, lifting it impressively, “was compiled by the Culture and Ethnology Department of the Intergalactic Mining Company.”

The larger Chamco brother batted his eyebones. “I didn’t know we had one.”

Char sniffed. “It was disbanded more than a century ago. Useless waste of money. Yapping around about ecological impacts and junk like that.” He shifted his bulk around to Terl. “Is this some kind of scheme to explain a nonscheduled vacation? You’re going to get your butt in a bind. I can see it, a pile of requisitions this high for breathe-gas tanks and scoutcraft. You won’t get any of my workers.”

“Turn off the juice,” said Terl. “I only said that Man—”

“I know what you said. But you got your appointment because you are clever. That’s right, clever. Not intelligent. Clever. And I can see right through an excuse to go on a hunting expedition. What Psychlo in his right skull would bother with the things?”

The smaller Chamco brother grinned. “I get tired of just dig-dig-dig, ship-ship-ship. Hunting might be fun. I didn’t think anybody did it for—”

Char turned on him like a tank zeroing in on its prey. “Fun hunting those things! You ever see one?” He lurched to his feet and the floor creaked. He put his paw just above his belt. “They only come up to here! They got hardly any hair on them except their heads. They’re a dirty white color like a slug. They’re so brittle they break up when you try to put them in a pouch.” He snarled in disgust and picked up a saucepan of kerbango. “They’re so weak they couldn’t pick this up without straining their guts. And they’re not good eating.” He tossed off the kerbango and made an earthquake shudder.

“You ever see one?” said the bigger Chamco brother.

Char sat down, the dome rumbled, and he handed the empty saucepan to the steward. “No,” he said. “Not alive. I seen some bones in the shafts and I heard.”

“There were thousands of them once,” said Terl, ignoring the mine manager. “Thousands! All over the place.”

Char belched. “Shouldn’t wonder they die off. They breathe this oxygen-nitrogen air. Deadly stuff.”

“I got a crack in my face mask yesterday,” said the smaller Chamco brother. “For about thirty seconds I thought I wasn’t going to make it. Bright lights bursting inside your skull. Deadly stuff. I really look forward to getting back home where you can walk around without a suit or mask, where the gravity gives you something to push against, where everything is a beautiful purple and there’s not one bit of this green stuff. My papa used to tell me that if I wasn’t a good Psychlo and if I didn’t say sir-sir-sir to the right people, I’d wind up at a butt end of nowhere like this. He was right. I did. It’s your shot, Brother.”

Char sat back and eyed Terl. “You ain’t really going hunting for a man, are you?”

Terl looked at his book. He inserted one of his talons to keep his place and then thumped the volume against his knee.

“I think you’re wrong,” he mused. “There was something to these creatures. Before we came along, it says here, they had towns on every continent. They had flying machines and boats. They even appear to have fired off stuff into space.”

“How do you know that wasn’t some other race?” said Char. “How do you know it wasn’t some lost colony of Psychlos?”

“No, it wasn’t that,” said Terl. “Psychlos can’t breathe this air. It was man all right, just like the cultural guys researched. And right in our own histories, you know how it says we got here?”

“Ump,” said Char.

“Man apparently sent out some kind of probe that gave full directions to the place, had pictures of man on it and everything. It got picked up by a Psychlo recon. And you know what?”

“Ump,” said Char.

“The probe and the pictures were on a metal that was rare-rare-rare everywhere and worth a clanking fortune. And Intergalactic paid the Psychlo governors sixty trillion Galactic credits for the directions and the concession. One gas barrage and we were in business.”

“Fairy tales, fairy tales,” said Char. “Every planet I ever helped gut has some butt and crap story like that. Every one.” He yawned his face into a huge cavern. “All that was hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago. You ever notice that the public relations department always puts their fairy tales so far back nobody can ever check them?”

“I’m going to go out and catch one of these things,” said Terl.

“Not with any of my crews or equipment you ain’t,” said Char.

Terl heaved his mammoth bulk off the seat and crossed the creaking floor to the berthing hatch.

“You’re as crazy as a nebula of crap,” said Char.

The two Chamco brothers got back into their game and intently and alternately laser-blasted the entrapped mayflies into smoky puffs, one by one.

Char looked at the empty door. The security chief knew no Psychlo could go up into those mountains. Terl really was crazy. There was deadly uranium up there.

But Terl, rumbling along a hallway to his room, did not consider himself crazy. He was being very clever as always. He had started the rumors so no questions would get out of hand when he began to put into motion the personal plans that would make him wealthy and powerful and, almost as important, dig him out of this accursed planet.

The man-things were the perfect answer. All he needed was just one and then he could get the others. His campaign had begun and begun very well, he thought.

He went to sleep gloating over how clever he was.

2

It was a good day for a funeral, only it seemed there wasn’t going to be one.

Dark, stormy-looking clouds were creeping in from the west, shredded by the snow-speckled peaks, leaving only a few patches of blue sky showing.

Jonnie Goodboy Tyler stood beside his horse at the upper end of the wide mountain meadow and looked with discontent upon the sprawled and decayed village.

His father was dead and he ought to be properly buried. He hadn’t died of the red blotches and there was no question of somebody else catching it. His bones had just crumbled away. So there was no excuse not to properly bury him. Yet there was no sign of anyone doing so.

Jonnie had gotten up in the dawn dark, determined to choke down his grief and go about his correct business. He had yelled up Windsplitter, the fastest of his several horses, put a cowhide rope on his nose, and gone down through the dangerous defiles to the lower plain, and with a lot of hard riding and herding, had pushed five wild cattle back up to the mountain meadow. He had then bashed out the brains of the fattest of them and ordered his Aunt Ellen to push the barbecue fire together and get meat cooking.

Aunt Ellen hadn’t cared for the orders. She had broken her sharpest rock, she said, and couldn’t skin and cut the meat, and certain men hadn’t dragged in any firewood lately.

Jonnie Goodboy had stood very tall and looked at her. Among people who were average height, Jonnie Goodboy stood half a head taller, a muscular six feet shining with the bronzed health of his twenty years. He had just stood there, wind tangling his corn-yellow hair and beard, looking at her with his ice-blue eyes. And Aunt Ellen had gone and found some wood and had put a stone to work, even though it was a very dull one. He could see her now, down there below him, wrapped in the smoke of slow-roasting meat, busy.

There ought to be more activity in the village, Jonnie thought. The last big funeral he had seen was when he was about five years old, when Smith the mayor had died. There had been songs and preaching and a feast and it had ended with a dance by moonlight. Mayor Smith had been put in a hole in the ground and the dirt filled in over him, and while the two cross-sticks of the marker were long since gone, it had been a proper respectful funeral. More recently they had just dumped the dead in the black-rock gulch below the water pool and let the coyotes clean them up.

Well, that wasn’t the way you went about it, Jonnie told himself. Not with his father, anyway.

He spun on his heel and with one motion went aboard Windsplitterand with the thump of a hard bare heel sent the horse down toward the courthouse.

He passed by the decayed ruins of cabins on the outskirts. Every year they caved in further. For a long time anybody needing a building log hadn’t cut any trees: they had just stripped handy existing structures. But the logs in these cabins were so eaten up and rotted now, they hardly even served as firewood.

Windsplitter picked his way down the weed-grown track, walking watchfully to avoid stepping on ancient and newly discarded food bones and trash. He twitched his ear toward a distant wolf howl from up in a mountain glen.

The smell of new blood and the meat smoke must be pulling the wolves down, thought Jonnie, and he hefted his kill-club from where it dangled by a thong into his palm. He’d lately seen a wolf right down in the cabins, prowling around for bones, or maybe even a puppy or a child. Even a decade ago it wouldn’t have happened. But every year there were fewer and fewer people.

Legend said that there had been a thousand in the valley, but Jonnie thought that was probably an exaggeration. There was plenty of food. The wide plains below the peaks were overrun with wild cattle, wild pigs and bands of horses. The ranges above were alive with deer and goats. And even an unskilled hunter had no trouble getting food. There was plenty of water due to the melting snows and streams, and the little patches of vegetables would thrive if anybody planted and tended them.

No, it wasn’t food. It was something else. Animals reproduced, it seemed, but Man didn’t. At least not to any extent. The death rate and the birth rate were unbalanced, with death the winner. Even when children were born they sometimes had only one eye or one lung or one hand and had to be left out in the icy night. Monsters were unwanted things. All life was overpowered by a fear of monsters.

Maybe it was this valley.

When he was seven he had asked his father about it. “But maybe people can’t live in this place,” he had said.

His father had looked at him wearily. “There were people in some other valleys, according to the legends. They’re all gone, but there are still some of us.”

He had not been convinced. Jonnie had said, “There’s all those plains down there and they’re full of animals. Why don’t we go live there?”

Well, Jonnie had always been a bit of a trial. Too smart, the elders had said. Always stirring things up. Questions, questions. And did he believe what he was told? Even by older men who knew a lot better? No. Not Jonnie Goodboy Tyler. But his father had not brought any of this up. He had just said wearily, “There’s no timber down there to build cabins.”

This hadn’t explained anything, so Jonnie had said, “I bet I could find something down there to build a cabin with.”

His father had knelt down, patient for once, and said, “You’re a good boy, Jonnie. And your mother and I love you very much. But nobody could build anything that would keep out the monsters.”

Monsters, monsters. All his life Jonnie had been hearing about the monsters. He’d never seen one. But he held his peace. The oldsters believed in monsters, so they believed in monsters.

But thinking of his father brought an unwelcome wetness to his eyes.

And he was almost unseated as his horse reared. A string of foot-long mountain rats had rushed headlong from a cabin and hit Windsplitter’s legs.

What you get for dreaming, Jonnie snapped to himself. He put Windsplitter’s four hoofs back down on the path and drummed him forward the last few yards to the courthouse.

3

Chrissie was standing there, her leg being hugged as always by her younger sister.

Jonnie Goodboy ignored her and looked at the courthouse. The old, old building was the only one to have a stone foundation and stone floor. Somebody had said it was a thousand years old, and though Jonnie didn’t believe it, the place sure looked it. Even its seventeenth roof was as swaybacked as an overpacked horse. There wasn’t a log in the upper structure that wasn’t gaping with wormholes. The windows were mainly caved in like eyeholes in a rotted skull. The stone walkway close to it was worn half a foot deep by the bare horny feet of scores of generations of villagers coming here to be tried and punished in the olden days when somebody had cared. In his lifetime Jonnie had never seen a trial, or a town meeting for that matter.

“Parson Staffor is inside,” said Chrissie. She was a slight girl, very pretty, about eighteen. She had large black eyes in strange contrast to her corn-silk hair. She had wrapped around herself a doeskin, really tight, and it showed her breasts and a lot of bare leg.

Her little sister, Pattie, a budding copy of the older girl, looked bright-eyed and interested. “Is there going to be a real funeral, Jonnie?”

Jonnie didn’t answer. He slid off Windsplitter in a graceful single motion. He handed the lead rope to Pattie, who ecstatically uncoiled herself from Chrissie’s leg and snatched at it. At seven, Pattie had no parents and little enough of a home, and her sun rose and set only on Jonnie’s proud orders.

“Is there going to be meat and a burying in a hole in the ground and everything?” demanded Pattie.

Jonnie started through the courthouse door, paying no heed to the hand Chrissie put out to touch his arm.

Parson Staffor lay sprawled on a mound of dirty grass, mouth open in snores and flies buzzing about. Jonnie stirred him with his foot.

Parson Staffor had seen better days. Once he had been fat and inclined to pomposity. But that was before he had begun to chew locoweed—to ease his toothaches, he said. He was gaunt now, dried up, nearly toothless, seamed with inlaid grime. Some wads of weed lay on the stones beside his moldy bed.

As the toe prodded him again, Staffor opened his eyes and rubbed some of the scum out of them in alarm. Then he saw it was Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, and he fell back with lost interest.

“Get up,” said Jonnie.

“That’s this generation,” muttered the parson. “No respect for their elders. Rushing off to the bushes, fornicating, grabbing the best meat pieces.”

“Get up,” said Jonnie. “You are going to give a funeral.”

“A funeral?” moaned Staffor.

“With meat and sermons and dancing.”

“Who is dead?”

“You know quite well who’s dead. You were there at the end.”

“Oh, yes. Your father. A good man. Yes, a good man. Well, maybe he was your father.”

Jonnie suddenly looked a little dangerous. He was standing there at ease, but he was wearing the skin of a puma that he himself had slain and he had his kill-club on a wrist thong. The club seemed to jump of its own volition into his palm.

Parson Staffor abruptly sat up. “Now don’t take it wrong, Jonnie. It’s just that things are a little mixed up these days, you know. Your mother had three husbands one time and another, and there being no real ceremonies these days—”

“You better get up,” said Jonnie.

Staffor clawed for the corner of an ancient, scarred bench and pulled himself upright. He began to tie the deerskin he usually wore, and obviously had worn far too long, using a frayed woven-grass rope. “My memory isn’t so good these days, Jonnie. One time I could remember all kinds of things. Legends, marriage ceremonies, hunt blessings, even family quarrels.” He was looking around for some fresh locoweed.

“When the sun is straight up,” said Jonnie, “you’re going to call the whole village together at the old graveyard and you’re—”

“Who’s going to dig the hole? There has to be a hole, you know, for a proper funeral.”

“I’ll dig the hole,” said Jonnie.

Staffor had found some fresh locoweed and began to gum it. He looked relieved. “Well, I’m glad the town doesn’t have to dig the hole. Horns, but this stuff is green. You said meat. Who is going to kill and cook it?”

“That’s all taken care of.”

Staffor nodded and then abruptly saw more work ahead. “Who’s going to assemble the people?”

“I’ll ask Pattie to tell them.”

Staffor looked at him reproachfully. “Then there’s nothing for me to do until straight up. Why’d you wake me up?” He threw himself back down on the dirty grass and sourly watched Jonnie walk out of the ancient room.

4

Jonnie Goodboy sat with his knees to his chest, his arms wrapped around them, staring into the remains of the dance fire.

Chrissie lay on her stomach beside him, idly shredding the seeds from a large sunflower between her very white teeth. She looked up at Jonnie from time to time, a little puzzled but not unduly so. She had never seen him cry before, even as a little boy. She knew he had loved his father. But Jonnie was usually so tall and grand, even cold. Could it be that under that good-looking, almost pretty face, he felt emotions for her, too? It was something to speculate about. She knew very well how she felt about Jonnie. If anything happened to Jonnie she would throw herself off the cliff where they sometimes herded wild cattle to their death, an easy way to kill them. Yes, she’d just throw herself off that cliff. Life without Jonnie Goodboy would not only not be worth living, it would be totally and completely unbearable. Maybe Jonnie did care about her. The tears showed something.

Pattie had no such troubles. She had not only stuffed herself with roast meat, she had also stuffed herself with the wild strawberries that had been served by the heap. And then during the dancing she had run and run and run with two or three little boys and then come back to eat some more. She was sleeping so heavily she looked like a mound of rags.

Jonnie blamed himself. He had tried to tell his father, not just when he was seven, but many times thereafter, that something was wrong with this place. Places were not all the same. Jonnie had been—was—sure of it. Why did the pigs and horses and cattle in the plains have little pigs and horses and cattle so numerously and so continuously? Yes, and why were there more and more wolves and coyotes and pumas and birds up in the higher ranges, and fewer and fewer men?

The villagers had been quite happy with the funeral, especially since Jonnie and a couple of others had done most of the work.

Jonnie had not been happy with it at all. It wasn’t good enough.

They had gathered at sun straight up on the knoll above the village where some said the graveyard had been. The markers were all gone. Maybe it had been a graveyard. When Jonnie had toiled—naked so as not to stain his puma-skin cloak and doe britches—in the morning sun, he had dug into something that might have been an old grave. At least there was a bone in it that could have been human.

The villagers had come slouching around and there had been a wait while Pattie tore back to the courthouse and awakened Parson Staffor again. Only twenty-five of them had assembled. The others had said they were tired and asked for any food to be brought back to them.

Then there had been an argument about the shape of the grave hole. Jonnie had dug it oblong so the body could lie level, but when Staffor arrived he said it should be straight up and down, that graves were dug straight up and down because you could get more bodies into a graveyard that way. When Jonnie had pointed out that there weren’t any burials these days and there was plenty of room, Staffor had told him off in front of everybody.

“You’re too smart,” Staffor had rapped at him. “When we had even half a council they used to remark on it. Every few council meetings, some prank of yours would come up. You’d ridden to the high ridge and killed a goat. You’d gone clear up Highpeak and gotten lost in a blizzard and found your way back, you said, by following the downslope of the ground. Too smart. Who else trained six horses? Everybody knows graves should be straight up and down.”

But they had buried his father lying flat anyway, because nobody else had wanted to do more digging and the sun was now past straight up and it was getting hot.

Jonnie hadn’t dared suggest what he really wanted to do. There would have been a riot.

He had wanted to put his father in the cave of the ancient gods, far up at the top of the dark canyon, a savage cleft in the side of the tallest peak. When he was twelve he had strayed up there, more trying out a pony than going someplace. But the way up the canyon had been very flat and inviting. He had gone for miles and miles and miles and then he had been abruptly halted by giant vertical doors. They were of some kind of metal, heavily corroded. One couldn’t see them from above or even from the canyon rims. They were absolutely huge. They went up and up.

He had gotten off his pony and climbed over the rubble in front of them and simply stared. He had walked all around in circles and then come back and stared some more.

After a while he had gotten brave and had walked up to them. But push as he might, he couldn’t open them. Then he had found a latchlike bar and he had pried it off and it fell, just missing his foot. Rusted but very heavy.

He had braced his shoulder against one door, sure that it was a door, and pushed and pushed. But his twelve-year-old shoulder and weight hadn’t had much effect on it.

Then he had taken the fallen bar and had begun to pry it into the slight crack, and after a few minutes, he had gotten a purchase with it.

There had been a horrible groaning sound that almost stood his hair up straight, and he had dropped the bar and had run for the pony.

Once he was mounted, his fright had ebbed a bit. Maybe it was just a sound caused by the rusted hinges. Maybe it wasn’t a monster.

He had gone back and worked some more with the bar, and sure enough, it was just the door groaning on the pins that held it.

An awful smell had come out of the cracked opening. The smell itself had made him afraid. A little light had been let in and he peeked inside.

A long flight of steps led down, remarkably even steps. And they would have been very neat, except—?

The steps were covered by skeletons tumbled every which way. Skeletons in strips of clothing—clothing like he had never seen.

Bits of metal, some bright, had fallen among the bones.

He had run away again, but this time not as far as the pony. He had suddenly realized he would need proof.

Bracing his nerve to a pitch he had seldom before achieved, he went back and gingerly stepped inside and picked up one of the bits of metal. It had a pretty design, a bird with flying wings holding arrows in its claws, quite bright.

His heart almost stopped when the skull he had removed it from tipped sideways and went to powder before his very gaze, as though it had reproached him with its gaping eyes for his robbery and then expired.

The pony had been in a white-coat lather when he pulled up in the village.

For two whole days he had said nothing, wondering how best to ask his questions. Previous experiences in asking questions had made him cautious.

Mayor Duncan was still alive at that time. Jonnie had sat quietly beside him until the big man was properly stuffed with venison and was quiet except for a few belches.

“That big tomb,” Jonnie had said abruptly.

“What big what?” Mayor Duncan had snorted.

“The place up the dark canyon where they used to put the dead people.”

“What place?”

Jonnie had taken out the bright bird badge and shown it to Mayor Duncan.

Duncan had looked at it, twisting his head this way and that, twisting the badge this way and that.

Parson Staffor, brighter in those days, had reached across the fire in a sudden swoop and grabbed the badge.

The ensuing interrogation had not been pleasant: about young boys who went to places that were forbidden and got everybody in trouble and didn’t listen at conferences where they had to learn legends and were too smart anyway.

Mayor Duncan, however, had himself been curious and finally pinned Parson Staffor into recounting an applicable legend.

“A tomb of the old gods,” the parson had finally said. “Nobody has been there in living memory—small boys do not count. But it was said to exist by my great-grandfather when he was still alive—and he lived a long time. The gods used to come into these mountains and they buried the great men in huge caverns. When the lightning flashed on Highpeak, it was because the gods had come to bury a great man from over the water.

“Once there were thousands and thousands living in big villages a hundred times the size of this one. These villages were to the east, and it is said there is the remains of one straight east where thousands lived. And the place was flat except for some hills. And when a great man died there the gods brought him to the tomb of the gods.”

Parson Staffor had shaken the badge. “This was placed on the foreheads of the great when they were laid to rest in the great tomb of the gods. And that’s what it is, and ancient law says that nobody is supposed to go there and must not go there and had better stay away from there forever—especially little boys.” And he had put the badge in his pouch, and that was the last Jonnie ever saw of it. After all, Staffor was a holy man and in charge of holy things.

Nevertheless, Jonnie thought his father should have been buried in the tomb of the gods. Jonnie had never been back there again and thought of it only when he saw lightning hit Highpeak.

But he wished he had buried his father there.

“Are you worried?” asked Chrissie.

Jonnie looked down at her, his reverie broken. The dying fire wove a reddish sheen into her hair and sparked in her dark eyes.

“It’s my fault,” said Jonnie.

Chrissie smiled and shook her head. Nothing could be Jonnie’s fault.

“Yes, it is,” said Jonnie. “There’s something wrong with this place. My father’s bones?.?.?.?in the last year they just crumbled like that skeleton’s in the tomb of the gods.”

“The tomb of the what?” said Chrissie idly. If Jonnie wanted to talk nonsense it was all right with her. At least he was talking to her.

“I should have buried him there. He was a great man. He taught me a lot of things—how to braid grass rope, how to wait for a puma to crouch before you stepped aside and hit him as he sprang; they can’t turn in midair, you know. How to cut hide into strips?—”

“Jonnie, you aren’t guilty of anything.”

“It was a bad funeral.”

“Jonnie, it’s the only funeral I remember.”

“No, it was not a good funeral. Staffor didn’t preach a funeral sermon.”

“He talked. I didn’t listen because I was helping gather strawberries, but I know he talked. Did he say something bad?”

“No. Only it didn’t apply.”

“Well, what did he say, Jonnie?”

“Oh, you know, all that stuff about God being angry with the people. Everybody knows that legend. I can quote it myself.”

“Quote it.”

Jonnie sniffed a little impatiently. But she was interested and it made him feel a little better.

“?‘.?.?.?And then there came a day when God was wroth. And wearied he was of the fornicating and pleasure dallying of the people. And he did cause a wondrous cloud to come and everywhere it struck, the anger of God snuffed out the breath and breathing of ninety-nine out of a hundred men. And disaster lay upon the land and plagues and epidemics rolled and smote the unholy; and when it was done, the wicked were gone and only the holy and righteous, the true children of the Lord, remained upon the stark and bloodied field. But God even then was not sure and so he tested them. He sent monsters upon them to drive them to the hills and secret places, and lo, the monsters hunted them and made them less and less until at last all men remaining were the only holy, the only blessed, the only sure righteous upon Earth. Hey man!’?”

“Oh, that one. You say it very nicely, Jonnie.”

“It’s my fault,” said Jonnie morosely. “I should have made my father listen. There is something wrong with this place. I am certain that had he listened and had we moved elsewhere, he would be alive today. I feel it!”

“Where else is there?”

“There’s that whole great plain out there. Weeks of riding on it, I am sure. And they say man once lived in a big village out there.”

“Oh, no, Jonnie. The monsters.”

“I’ve never seen a monster.”

“You’ve seen the shiny flashing things that sail overhead every few days.”

“Oh, those. The sun and moon sail overhead, too. So do the stars. And even shooting stars.”

Chrissie was frightened suddenly. “Jonnie, you’re not going to do something?”

“I am. With first light I am going to ride out and see if there really was a big village in the plains.”

Chrissie felt her heart contract. She looked up at his determined profile. It was as though she was sinking down, down, down into the earth, as though she lay in today’s grave.

“Please, Jonnie.”

“No, I’m going.”

“Jonnie, I’ll go with you.”

“No, you stay here.” He thought fast, something to deter her. “I may be gone for a whole year.”

Water got into her sight. “What will I do if you don’t come back?”

“I’ll come back.”

“Jonnie, if you don’t come back in a year, I’ll come looking for you.”

Jonnie frowned. He scented blackmail.

“Jonnie, if you’re leaving, you see those stars up there? When they come back to the same place next year and you haven’t returned, I will come looking.”

“You’d be killed out in the plains. The pigs, the wild cattle—”

“Jonnie, that is what I will do. I swear it, Jonnie.”

“You think I’d just wander off and never return?”

“That’s what I will do, Jonnie. You can go. But that’s what I will do.”

5

The first dawn light was painting Highpeak rose. It was going to be a beautiful day.

Jonnie Goodboy was completing the packing of a lead horse. Windsplitter was sidling about, biting at the grass, but not really eating. He had his eye on Jonnie. They were obviously going somewhere, and Windsplitter was not going to be left out.

Some wisps of smoke were coming from the breakfast fire of the Jimson family nearby. They were roasting a dog. Yesterday at the funeral feast nearly a score of dogs had gotten into an idiot fight. There had been plenty of bones and meat as well. But the pack had gotten into a fight and a big brindle had been killed. Looked like the Jimson family would have meat all day.

Jonnie was trying to keep his mind on petty details and off Chrissie and Pattie, who were standing there watching him quietly.

Brown Limper Staffor was also there, idling about in the background. He had a clubfoot, born that way. Obviously deformed and should have been killed, but he was the only child the Staffors had ever had, and Staffor was parson after all. Maybe mayor, too, since there wasn’t any now.

There was no affection whatever between Jonnie and Brown Limper. During the funeral dancing, Brown had sat on the sidelines making sneering remarks about the dancing, about the funeral, about the meat, about the strawberries. But when he had made a remark about Jonnie’s father—“Maybe never had a bone in the right place”—Jonnie had hit him a backhand cuff. Made Jonnie ashamed of himself, hitting a cripple.

Brown Limper stood crookedly, a faint blue bruise on his cheek, watching Jonnie get ready, wishes of bad luck written all over him. Two other boys of similar age—there were only five in the whole village who were in their late teens—wandered up and asked Brown what was going on. Brown shrugged.

Jonnie kept his mind carefully on his business. He was probably taking too much, but he didn’t know what he’d run into. Nobody knew. In the two buckskin sacks he was roping on either side of the lead horse, he had flint stones for fire, rat’s nests for tinder, bundles of cut thongs, some sharp-edged rocks that were sometimes hard to find and cut indifferently well, three spare kill-clubs—one heavy enough to crush a bear’s skull just in case—some warm robes that didn’t stink very much, a couple of buckskins for spare clothes?.?.?.?

He gave a start. He hadn’t realized Chrissie had come within a foot of him. He hoped he wouldn’t have to talk.

Blackmail, that’s what it was—plain as possible and all bad. If she’d said she would kill herself if he didn’t come back, well, one could have put that down to girl vaporings. But threatening to follow him in a year put another shadow on it entirely. It meant he would have to be cautious. He’d have to be careful not to get himself killed. It was one thing to worry about his own life; he didn’t care a snap for risk or danger. But the thought of Chrissie going down on the plains if he didn’t come back made him snow-cold at the pit of his stomach. She’d be gored or mauled or eaten alive and every agonizing second of it would be Jonnie’s fault. She had effectively committed him to caution and care—just what she intended.

She was holding something out to him. Two somethings. One was a large bone needle with a thong hole in it, and the other was a skin awl. Both were worn and polished and valuable.

“They were mama’s,” said Chrissie.

“I don’t need anything.”

“No, you have them.”

“I won’t need them!”

“If you lose your clothes,” she wailed, “how are you going to sew?”

The crowd had thickened. Jonnie didn’t need any outbursts. He snatched the needle and awl out of her hand and unlashed the neck of a sack and dropped them in, made sure they hadn’t missed and dropped out, and then relashed the sack.

Chrissie stood more quietly. Jonnie turned and faced her. He was a little bit shocked. There wasn’t even a smudge of color in her face. She looked like she hadn’t slept and had tick fever as well.

Jonnie’s resolution wavered. Then beyond Chrissie he saw Brown Limper tittering and talking behind his hand to Petie Thommso.

Jonnie’s face went tight. He grabbed Chrissie and kissed her hard. It was as though he had taken a board from an irrigation trough: the tears went down her cheeks.

“Now look,” said Jonnie. “Don’t you follow me!”

She made a careful effort to control her voice. “If you don’t come back in a year, I will. By all the gods on Highpeak, Jonnie, I will.”

He looked at her. Then he beckoned to Windsplitter, who sidled over. With one smooth spring he mounted, the lead rope of the other horse gripped in his hand.

“You can have my other four horses,” said Jonnie to Chrissie. “Don’t eat them; they’re trained.” He paused. “Unless you get awful hungry, of course, like in the winter.”

Chrissie hung on to his leg for a moment and then she stepped back and sagged.

Jonnie thumped Windsplitter with a heel and they moved off. This was going to be no wild free ride to adventure. This was going to be a tiptoe scout with care. Chrissie had seen to that!

At the entrance to the defile he looked back. About fifteen people were still standing there watching him go. They all looked dejected. He used a heel signal to make Windsplitter rear and waved his hand. They all waved back with sudden animation.

Then Jonnie was gone down the dark canyon trail to the wide and unknown plains.

The rest of the people drifted off. Chrissie still stood there, hoping with a wild crazy hope that he would ride into sight, returning.

Pattie tugged at her leg. “Chrissie. Chrissie, will he come back?”

Chrissie’s voice was very low, her eyes like ashes in a dead fire. “Goodbye,” she whispered.

6

Terl belched. It was a polite way to attract attention, but the belch didn’t make much impression through the whine and howl of machines in the transport department maintenance dome.

Zzt’s concentration on his work became more marked. Minesite Sixteen’s transport chief had little use for the security head. Every time a tool or a car or fuel turned up missing—or even just broken—it got attention from security.

Three crashed cars were strewn about in various stages of reassembly, one of them very messy with splotches of green Psychlo blood on the interior upholstery. The big drills that dangled from the ceiling rails pointed sharp beaks this way and that, idling in their programing. Lathes with nothing in their jaws spun waiting for something to twist and shave. Belts snarled and slapped at each other.

Terl watched the surprisingly nimble talons of Zzt disassemble the small concentric shells of a high-speed jet engine. Terl had hoped to detect a small tremble or two in Zzt’s paws—if the transport chief’s conscience was bothering him, it would be much easier to do business. There was no tremble.

Zzt finished the disassembly and threw the last ring on the bench. His yellow orbs contracted as he looked at Terl. “Well? What have I done now?”

Terl lumbered closer and looked around. “Where are your maintenance men?”

“We’re fifteen mechanics under complement. They were transferred to operations over the last month. I know it and you know it. So why are you here?”

As chief of security, Terl had learned through experience not to be very straightforward. If he simply asked for a manual reconnaissance plane, the transport chief would demand the emergency voucher, not get it, and say “No transport.” And there were no emergencies for security on this dull planet. Not real ones. In hundreds of years of operation, there had not been the slightest security threat to Intergalactic Mining operations here. A dull-dull-dull security scene, and consequently the chief of that department was not considered very important. Apparent threats had to be manufactured with guile as their sole ingredient.

“I’ve been investigating a suspicion of conspiracy to sabotage transport,” said Terl. “Kept me busy for the last three weeks.” He eased his bulk back against a wrecked car.

“Don’t lean on that recon. You’ll dent its wing.”

Terl decided it was better to be friendly and rumbled over to a stool at the bench where Zzt was working. “Confidentially, Zzt, I’ve had an idea that could get us some outside personnel. I’m working on it, and that’s why I need a manual recon.”

Zzt batted his eyebones and sat down on another stool, which creaked despairingly under his thousand-pound bulk.

“This planet,” said Terl confidingly, “used to have a sentient race on it.”

“What race was that?” asked Zzt suspiciously.

“Man,” said Terl.

Zzt looked at him searchingly. A security officer was never noted for his sense of humor. Some had been known to bait and entrap and then file charges. But Zzt couldn’t help himself. His mouthbones started to stretch, and even though he sought to control them, they spread and suddenly his laugh exploded in Terl’s face. Zzt hastily got it under control and turned back to his bench to resume work.

“Anything else on your mind?” asked Zzt, as an afterthought.

This was not going well, thought Terl. Well, that’s what happened when you were frank. It just didn’t mix with security.

“This suspicion of conspiracy to sabotage transport,” said Terl as he looked around at the wrecked cars with half-lowered eyebones, “could reach to high places.”

Zzt threw down a wrench with a clang. A low snarl rumbled in him. He sat there, staring in front of him. He was thinking.

“What do you really want?” he asked at last.

“A recon plane. For five or six days.”

Zzt got up and yanked a transport schedule clipboard off the wall and studied it. He could hear Terl almost purring.

“You see this schedule?” said Zzt, pushing it under Terl’s nose.

“Well, yes.”

“Do you see where it has six drone recons assigned to security?”

“Of course.”

“And do you see where this has been going on for”—Zzt peeled back sheet after sheet—“blast! For centuries, I suppose.”

“Have to keep a minesite planet under surveillance,” said Terl complacently.

“Under surveillance for what?” said Zzt. “Every scrap of ore was spotted and estimated long before your and my living memory. There’s nothing out there but mammals. Air organisms.”

...(con't) see links view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. In the first chapter we discover that the alien invaders discovered Earth as a result of a probe sent into distant space with directions and information about the Earth and its people. Today we are sending out similar probes and radio signals to “find out if sentient life exists on other planets.” Do you feel this a wise thing to do or very unwise and if so, why?

2. Do you see any similarity between what the Psychlos did to the peoples of Earth and what the Europeans did to the native peoples of Mexico and other nations when they discovered that gold and other precious minerals were to be found in abundance? Can you think of other similarities between the treatment of the peoples of Earth by the Psychlos and that of other races to their fellows in human history? Is anything like this occurring still today?

3. In the final chapters of the book we find out the part that the intergalactic empire bankers play in all this. Do you find any similarity between the galactic bankers and the bankers on planet Earth today? Explain the similarities and differences you see and give your opinion of their merits.

4. How accurately did you feel the book captured the ethnic and personality traits of the main Earth races most prominent in the book: American, Chinese, Russian, etc. Explain the key differences you felt between them.

Weblinks

»	Author's web site
»	Book's web site

Book Club Recommendations

Recommended to book clubs by 0 of 0 members.

Member Reviews

There are no user reviews at this time.
Rate this book