Alan Dean Foster Flinx 02 Tar Aiym Krang

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later also. Well, expressions of sympathy poured in from the other intelligent
races, including the Pitar. They were at least as outraged as any of the
others. Most races then sent out scouts to try to locate this new and virulent
alien race before they themselves could become the victims of a similar
atrocity.
'Two months later a man was found orbiting one of the devastated planet's two
moons in an antique, jury-rigged lifeboat. A cruiser of the Unop-Patha - you
know that race? - was on courtesy patrol at the time and happened to drift
within range of the boat's feeble transmitter. They had never encountered an
insane human before and were pretty much at a loss as to what to do with him
until they could finally turn him over to the nearest human authorities. That
happened to be the big research group which was sifting Treetrunk for clues. A
month of intensive treatment succeeded m restoring the fellow to partial
coherency.
It took them some time to make sense of his story. His mind had been badly
unhinged by months of helpless drifting in space, fears of meeting an enemy
ship - and, after a while, of not meeting one - and by what he had seen on the
planet itself. It was fortunate that he didn't have the courage to commit
suicide. The ugly story he told has been documented many times over and I
find it personally distasteful, so I will skip over the gory parts.
'The enemy had struck without warning, raining death on the unprepared,
populace. Being
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-Aiym%20Krang.txt (41 of 79) [1/16/03 6:44:31 PM]
file:///F|/rah/Alan%20Dean%20Foster/Foster,%20Alan%20Dean%20-%20Flinx%202%20-%
20Tar-Aiym%20Krang.txt without a regular military force - or need of one - the
planet was quite helpless. The police skiffs tried and, as might have been
expected, proved useless. All appeals for mercy, negotiations, or surrender
were met with the same response as ferocious resistance. When all opposition
had been crushed and all interstellar communications completely destroyed, or
blanketed out, the invaders came down in ships of vaguely familiar design to
inspect what remained of the battered colony.
'Our single survivor had been as surprised as anyone when the sneak tridee
screens had focused on the locks of the landing shuttles and armed Pitarian
troops had come pouring out. They were remorseless in their destruction of the
surviving human population, treating it as if they were the lowest, filthiest
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organisms in the universe. They helped themselves to a few valuables and such,
but for the most part they seemed to enjoy killing for the love of it. Like
weasels on
Terra. At this point the man's mind started to shrink away again. The
psychiatrists who attended him felt that if he'd remained sane he never would
have been able to cope with the other stresses that his escape put on his
mind. Like not eating for four days, and such. The Pitar were thorough.
They carried life detectors to search out survivors no matter how well they
were hidden.
'Our informant had lived in a small town near the planet's equator. He had
once been a ship's engineer and had bought a small, obsolete lifeboat which he
enjoyed tinkering with in his spare time. Again, it took a madman to suppose
that that wreck could ever make it to the nearest moon. Before the enemy
troops had reached his area he had managed to provision the tiny ship and
perform a successful liftoff. Obviously the orbiting warships were no longer
expecting a vessel from the planet's surface. All spaceports had been
destroyed, and all the commercial doublekay drive ships in parking orbit had
been vapourized while trying to escape or taken over by Pi tan an prize crews.
No one thought of an attempt to escape simply to space. The moons are
uninhabitable'
and there are no other planets in the system capable of supporting human life.
Or possibly they weren't geared to the detection of a propulsive system as
tiny and outmoded as his. Anyway, he made it safely through their
outward-turned screens and into a closed orbit around the first moon.
He never really expected to be picked up. All his addled mind could think of
was getting away from the abomination below. It was pure chance that he was
rescued.
'That was the gist of Ins story. Among the nauseating details the probes
pumped out of him was what the Pitar did with the bodies of all those missing
women. That was so disgusting the authorities tried to keep it from the
general public, but as usually happens in such cases, the word got out. The
resultant uproar was violent and widespread. War was never even formally
declared because most of the members of the Terran Congress held reserve
commissions and rushed to get aboard their ships.
'The gigantic armada that was assembled buried itself into the Pitarian [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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