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Down to Earth (Colonization, Book Two) - Softcover

Buch 2 von 3: Colonization

Turtledove, Harry

 
9780345430236: Down to Earth (Colonization, Book Two)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0345430239 ISBN 13: 9780345430236
Verlag: Del Rey, 2001

Inhaltsangabe

“The leading author of alternate history.”—USA Today

In 1942 Hitler led the world's most savage military machine. Stalin ruled Russia while America was just beginning to show its strength in World War II. Then, in Harry Turtledove's brilliantly imagined Worldwar saga, an alien assault changed everything. Nuclear destruction engulfed major cities, and the invaders claimed half the planet before an uneasy peace could be achieved.

A spectacular tale of tyranny and freedom, destruction and hope, Colonization takes us into the tumultuous 1960s, as the reptilian Race ponders its uneasy future. But now a new, even deadlier war threatens. Though the clamoring tribes of Earth play dangerous games of diplomacy, the ultimate power broker will be the Race itself. For the colonists have one option no human can ignore. With a vast, ancient empire already in place, the Race has the power to annihilate every living being on planet Earth . . .

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Harry Turtledove is the award-winning author of the alternate-history works The Man with the Iron Heart, The Guns of the South, and How Few Remain (winner of the Sidewise Award for Best Novel); the Hot War books: Bombs Away, Fallout, and Armistice; the War That Came Early novels: Hitler’s War, West and East, The Big Switch, Coup d’Etat, Two Fronts, and Last Orders; the Worldwar saga: In the Balance, Tilting the Balance, Upsetting the Balance, and Striking the Balance; the Colonization books: Second Contact, Down to Earth, and Aftershocks; the Great War epics: American Front, Walk in Hell, and Breakthroughs; the American Empire novels: Blood and Iron, The Center Cannot Hold, and Victorious Opposition; and the Settling Accounts series: Return Engagement, Drive to the East, The Grapple, and In at the Death. Turtledove is married to fellow novelist Laura Frankos. They have three daughters—Alison, Rachel, and Rebecca—and two granddaughters, Cordelia Turtledove Katayanagi and Phoebe Quinn Turtledove Katayanagi.

Aus dem Klappentext

er led the world's most savage military machine. Stalin ruled Russia while America was just beginning to show its strength in World War II. Then, in Harry Turtledove's brilliantly imagined Worldwar saga, an alien assault changed everything. Nuclear destruction engulfed major cities, and the invaders claimed half the planet before an uneasy peace could be achieved.

A spectacular tale of tyranny and freedom, destruction and hope, Colonization takes us into the tumultuous 1960s, as the reptilian Race ponders its uneasy future. But now a new, even deadlier war threatens. Though the clamoring tribes of Earth play dangerous games of diplomacy, the ultimate power broker will be the Race itself. For the colonists have one option no human can ignore. With a vast, ancient empire already in place, the Race has the power to annihilate every living being on planet Earth . . .

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Chapter 1

Atvar, the fleetlord of the Race's conquest fleet, and Reffet, the
fleetlord of the colonization fleet, were having a disagreement. They
had agreed on very little since Reffet brought the colonization fleet to
Tosev 3. Atvar was convinced Reffet still had no real understanding of
the way things worked on this miserable planet. He didn't know what
Reffet was convinced of--probably that things on Tosev 3 were in fact
the way the Race had fondly imagined them to be before sending out the
conquest fleet. "I do not know what you wish me to do, Reffet," he said.
They were equals; neither of them was Exalted Fleetlord to the other.
They could be, and often were, equally impolite to each other. "No
matter what you may believe, I cannot work miracles." He swiveled his
eye turrets this way and that to show exasperation.

Reffet swiveled his eye turrets, too, and hissed for good measure. "I do
not see that it is so difficult. The ship the Big Uglies have launched
is under very low acceleration. You have plenty of time to send a
reconnaissance probe after it and keep it under close, secret
observation."

"And you brought starships across the light-years between Home and
here!" Atvar exclaimed. "You must have had good officers and good
computers, for you surely were not up to the job unaided." He paced
across his office, which had been a suite in Shepheard's Hotel before
the Race occupied Cairo. It gave him plenty of room to pace; Tosevites
were larger than males and females of the Race, and, naturally, built in
proportion to their own size.

"Leave off your insults," Reffet replied with another hiss, an angry
one. His tailstump switched back and forth, back and forth. "I repeat, I
do not see that what I have asked is so very difficult. As I said, that
ship, that Clewis and Lark, is under acceleration of no more than a
hundredth of the force of gravity."

"Lewis and Clark." Atvar took no small relish in correcting his
colleague and rival over even minute details that shouldn't have
mattered to anyone save a Big Ugly. "That it is under tiny acceleration
does not matter. That it is under continuous acceleration does. If we
are to observe it closely and continually, our reconnaissance must be
under acceleration, too. And how, I ask, do you propose to keep that
secret? A spacecraft with a working engine is by the nature of things
anything but secret."

"By the Emperor!" Reffet burst out. He lowered his eyes to the floor
when naming his sovereign. So did Atvar, on hearing the title. From
training since hatchlinghood, any member of the Race would have done the
same. Still furious, Reffet went on, "These accursed Tosevites have no
business flying in space." He used an emphatic cough to underline his
words. "They have no business having instruments that let them detect
what we do when we fly in space, either."

Atvar let his mouth fall open in amusement. "Come here, Reffet," he
said, walking over to the window. "Come here--it is safe enough. I
intend no tricks, and the riots seem to have quieted down again, so no
Big Ugly is likely to be aiming a sniper's rifle in this direction at
the moment. I want to show you something."

Suspicion manifest in every line of his forward-sloping body, Reffet
came. "What is it?" The suspicion filled his voice, too.

"There." Atvar pointed west across the great river that flowed past
Cairo. "Do you see those three stone pyramids, there in the sand?"

Reffet deigned to turn one eye turret in that direction. "I see them.
What of it? They look massive, but weathered and primitive."

"They are primitive--that is my point," Atvar said. "They are as old as
any monuments on this world. They were built as memorials to local
rulers eight thousand years ago, more or less: eight thousand of our
years--half that many for the years of Tosev 3. Eight thousand years
ago, we had already had a planet- wide Empire for more than ninety
thousand years. We had already conquered the Rabotevs. We had already
conquered the Hallessi. We were beginning to wonder if the star
Tosev--this world's star--had any interesting planets. Here,
civilization was just hatching from its egg."

"And it should have taken much longer to hatch, too," Reffet said
irritably. "The Big Uglies should still be building monuments much like
these, as we were not long after we started gathering in cities."

"Truth." Atvar's voice was sad. "They should have. In fact, we thought
they had. You will have seen this picture of a Tosevite warrior in full
battle regalia before you set out from Home, of course."

He walked over to the hologram projector and called up an image. He had
seen it countless times himself, both before reaching Tosev 3 and since.
It showed a hairy Big Ugly in rusty chainmail, armed with sword and
spear and iron-faced wooden shield and riding a four-legged beast with a
long head, an unkempt mane, and a shaggy tail.

"Yes, of course I have seen that image," Reffet said. "It is one of
those our probe took sixteen hundred years ago. From it, we assumed the
conquest would be easy."

"So we did," Atvar agreed. "But the point is, in those intervening
sixteen hundred years--eight hundred of this planet's revolutions--the
Tosevites somehow developed industrial civilization. However much you
and I and every other member of the Race may wish they had remained
primitive, the sorry fact is that they did not. We have to deal with
that fact now."

"It was not planned thus." Reffet made that an accusation. The Race
moved by plans, by tiny incremental steps. Anything different came hard.

Atvar had been dealing with the Big Uglies for more than forty of his
years. By painful necessity, he'd begun to adapt to the hectic pace of
Tosev 3. "Whether it was planned or not, it is so. You cannot crawl back
into your eggshell and deny it."

Reffet wanted to deny it. Again, every line of his body showed as much.
So did the big breath of air he sucked deep into his lung. "I think I
would rather deal with the Tosevites than with you," he snarled. "I know
they are aliens. With you, I cannot tell whether you have become half
alien or are simply addled like an egg gone bad."

That did it. Atvar drew in a deep, angry breath of his own. It brought
the stinks of Cairo--the stinks of Big Uglies and of their food and
their wastes, as well as the stinks from the hydrocarbon-burning engines
they had developed themselves--across the scent receptors in his tongue.
"Go away," he told Reffet, and added an emphatic cough of his own. "I
have not the time to deal with your stupidity. Whatever the Big Uglies
in that spacecraft do, they will not do it soon. I am facing a serious
uprising in the subregion of the main continental mass called China. I
have to deal with that now. I will deal with the American spacecraft as
I find the chance, or when it becomes urgent. Meanwhile, good day."

"You have turned into a Big Ugly," Reffet said furiously. "All you care
about is the immediate. Anything that requires forethought is beyond
you."

"Tosev 3 will do that to a male--unless it kills him first," Atvar
answered. Then he paused. Both his eye turrets swung thoughtfully toward
Reffet. "Have you any notion how many casualties the Big Uglies'
continual...

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Verlag
Del Rey
Erscheinungsdatum
2001
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0345430239
ISBN 13 
9780345430236
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
624
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Verantwortliche Person
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