On Imhotep, a single green and gold forest with silver rivers and lakes covers a continent. The Crystal River flows into Dawnside Bay where Tigeries evacuated from Starkad have built the new town of Toborkozan. Out at sea, a slow but powerful wind fills the sails of the Tigery ship, Firefish, which is followed by flying snakes, while the high Imhotepan gravity gives speed and force to the green-crested, purple-troughed waves which shimmer, rush, boom and fling bitter spindrift.
Targovi lands his flying van on its pontoons beside the ship, secures a towline and flies across on a gravity impeller to be greeted by Diana Crowfeather and also to meet Axor. His clandestine plan is to persuade the young woman and the Wodenite to accompany him to Daedalus where they will provide unwitting cover for his continued spying operation, his targets being not agents of a foreign power but the local authorities whom he suspects of treason. He could have just obeyed his immediate superior's orders and stayed quiet. (With the fate of the Empire at stake, of course.)
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I remember the lowlands of that Inhotepan continent--and while it could never replace lost Starkad, many of the Tigeries evacuated there by the Empire and their descendants were happy there. But it was not enough for the restless youngest son of Dragoika.
I also get the strong impression most Tigeries were fiercely loyal to the Empire and held a deep grudge against a Merseia which used them as expendable tools in the Roidhunate's plots against Terra.
Ad astra! Sean
And are prepared to sacrifice both species in a maneuver against the Terran Empire.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And the vaz-Siravo also had no reason to love Merseia! I did not mention that race because we see none of them in THE GAME OF EMPIRE. It would have been hard to have one of the Sea People as a character in a story set on planets with oxy/nitrogen atmospheres.
It's my absolute conviction the expletives deleted in Peking are also plotting maneuvers against the US.
Ad astra! Sean
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