Seen from below, the descending ship is first a gleam, then:
"...a cloud no bigger than a man's hand."
-Poul Anderson, "Outpost of Empire" IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-72 AT p. 58.
This homely phrase is misleading. A cloud that could only be covered by an outstretched hand would be big.
The engines are silent;
countergravity fields snap trees and roil the lake;
the fast descent leaves a continuous thunderclap down from the stratosphere;
echoes cause mountain avalanches;
scorched winds rise;
auxiliary aircraft buzz the lake, probing, firing and shouting, "'Surrender!'";
the cruiser hangs, then lands on massive extended jacks;
armed and armored marine squadrons fly out;
data flow in to the bridge and commands flow out;
Captain Chang is confident that any small missiles will be intercepted and that gun turrets will triangulate on the source of any energy beams.
So how will the Free People resist?
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I don't know if you knew it, but this metaphor used by Anderson: "...a cloud no bigger than a man's hand," is yet another example of how he used the Bible. It alludes to a text from the Bible. This is what I read in the NEW AMERICAN BIBLE's version of 1 Kings 18.44: "And the seventh time the youth reported, "there is a cloud as small as a man's hand rising from the sea.""
Sean
Sean,
I did not know that that phrase was Biblical. So much of our language is either Biblical or Shakespearean.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
This metaphor used by PA seemed Biblical to me, so I googled and found out I was right, being taken from the text I quoted from Kings. Yes, so many of the metaphors and similes we use are taken from the Scriptures and Shakespeare!
Sean
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