Don Pfeil - Look Back to Earth

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Look Back to Earth
By Don Pfeil
A MANOR BOOK
Manor Books, Inc.
432 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10016
Copyright 1977, by Manor Books, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published by arrangement with the author.
Printed in the United States of America.
ISBN CODE0-532-15299-9
Chapter One
William Byrne squirmed restlessly in the center seat of the front row in the fleet com-mand center of the
Myriad, overlooking the battleship's busy control deck and fire control center below. Just behind him
stood a young, blonde woman with striking golden skin, her hand resting lightly on his shoulder, her eyes
more on him than on the bustle of activity as the mighty ship was prepared for battle.
On the situation screens in front of him, currently set to search out to the limits of their range, the little
points of light that indicated the position of the main Imperial battle fleet sparkled in a cloud too dense to
resolve into individual ships. Out there, on a collision course with his fleet, were nearly five thousand
warships, which in slightly less than an hour would be locked in combat with the Myriad fleet.
The computer projection had indicated to Byrne that over a hundred thousand men would lose their lives
in the coming battle, and briefly he wondered if the end, any end, could be worth such an expenditure of
human life. Wondered if perhaps he might have chosen a better course, a way of achieving his goals that
would not have demanded open warfare between Myriad and the Empire, would not have cost so much
in money and material, and, above all, lives.
"Fleet tactical dispersal complete, sir," an older, gray-haired man in the uniform of a full admiral
reported.
"Very well, Admiral. This is the last fleet, you know. The last battle. Let's make a good one, and hope it
was all worth it."
Byrne's job was finished. His fleet was de-ployed, and the tactics were set. Unless something
unexpected occurred, something requiring a major strategy decision, the rest of the opera-tion was in the
hands of the individual ship com-manders and the giant computers aboard theMyriad. No one man could
control a battle fleet that stretched across three-quarters of a million miles, or even comprehend the
actions that would fill a volume of some 5,400 quadrillion cubic miles. So Byrne sat back in his seat, then
reached up and gently squeezed the hand of the woman standing quietly behind him. Then he let his mind
drift back over the tortured, twisting path that had led him to this point in time and space.
Actually, it had all started with Byrne's father. That man, the hereditary Citizen of Myriad, one of the
richest of the outer systems independent of the Empire, had chosen to marry one of the liberated women
of Imperial Earth. The absolute leader of a rugged, male-oriented society, bred to a woman who
acknowledged no man's superiority, had produced the explosion that was William Byrne. A man and a
woman each endowed with considerable temperament—and temper—had married, and the result had
been a son with more temperament, and temper, than either of his parents.
Knowing that his chances of inheriting the Citizenship of Myriad were next to nonexistent, considering
the care that would be taken of his older brother, and unwilling to accept a life of comfortable but totally
boring uselessness, Byrne had taken his yearly stipend, borrowed against his inheritance from his brother,
and bought himself a commission in the Imperial forces as soon as he was of age, over the objections of
both his parents. He had spent five happy years as a combat leader in the marches of the Empire,
advancing from flight lieutenant to colonel. Ad-vancing until he'd been assigned to the new fleet battleship
Novi Sad, under the command of Brigadier General Harrison Caldwell.
Byrne thought of Caldwell as a fool. A man only a few years his senior who had advanced to staff rank
without ever leaving the surface of Mother Terra or the comforts of the Imperial Court. But a space
command had been necessary if Caldwell was going to advance any further in the Imperial Service, and
he had been given com-mand of the combat forces aboard the newly commissionedNovi Sad. Which
included the squadron of Wasp-class combat boats led by Colonel Byrne.
TheNovi Sad was in high Lunar orbit launching from the shipyards of Mare Crisium, taking on supplies
and undergoing space-worthi-ness tests, when an inspection team of minor functionaries from the Court
arrived. Anxious to show off his new command, General Caldwell sent for Byrne.
"Colonel, I want you to take one of the combat boats out. Copernicus Base is going to launch an empty
mail drone as a target for you."
"Sorry, General," Byrne had said from where he was standing, still at attention in front of his
commanding officer's large desk, his eyes centered on the gigantic portrait of Emperor Halim IX behind
Caldwell, "but the boats haven't been flight tested since shipment up from Earth. None of them are ready
for training missions yet, sir."
"They were tested before they left Earth, Colonel."
"But, sir..."
"That's an order, Byrne." Caldwell's voice was shrill, and Byrne could feel the eyes of the visitors from
the Court on his back.
"Yes, sir."
With a jar that spoke volumes about the level of training of the men handling the cradle controls, the
combat boat was ejected from its turret near the nose of theNovi Sad. Byrne's second officer, in the
right-hand seat, was Paro Pessem, a colonial from New Ilium, just out of the Academy. Byrne had
picked him for the mission because he was the sharpest of the new officers at ship handling, and he had
marked him down for rapid promotion despite the fact that he had insufficient funds to advance in the
normal manner. In the weapons officer's seat, centered behind Byrne and Pessem, was Captain C'taro,
an O-human officer from Haven who had served under Byrne for three years, and one of the best
gunners in the fleet. Many of Byrne's fellow officers refused to serve with C'taro, or any other natives of
Haven, because of the slight odor of hydrogen sulfide they gave off. But Byrne was glad to trade a bit of
nasal discomfort for the knowledge that his gunnery officer had the highest score in kill-torp shooting in
the fleet.
Smoothly feeding power into the gravitic drive nodes, Byrne dropped the boat down out of theNovi
Sad's orbit, down towards the moon's surface, quickly picking up the beacon of Coper-nicus Base on
the display panel in front of him.
"We have a redline event on engine two," Pessem shouted. Then the ship spun crazily, and the grav field
began to pulse between zero and plus-five, and Byrne's head banged solidly against the colestat hanging
down in front of his position ready for a navigation check, and for long, crucial moments he lost
consciousness.
Their landing, in the heart of the Lunar Appenines, was almost soft. The ship was no-thing but crumpled
wreckage after the dust had settled, but at least they hadn't left a new crater on the moon when they
came down. And, in a spaceship, any crash that didn't leave a crater had to be counted as a good
landing.
Dazed, Byrne shook his head, trying to clear his vision, and a burst of red exploded in his mind as wave
after wave of pain raced through his body. Fighting back the agony and the blackness that threatened to
overwhelm him, he held his head perfectly still, and slowly his vision began to clear, the white blur in front
of his eyes slowly becoming the helmet of his pressure suit, still hanging on the bracket in front of his
couch. But now it was hanging at an odd angle, and Byrne realized that the ship was down on its side and
the internal grav field was off.
The gimbals in Byrne's seat had evidently come unlocked during the crash, and the seat had swung
enough to partially compensate for the unnatural angle of the control room. He turned to look at Pessem,
whose seat was still locked, Pessem still strapped to it as if to a vertical wall.
And when Byrne looked at his young second officer, he knew, from the angle the man's head was
hanging, that there was nothing he could do for him. He heard a moan behind him, and turned to look at
C'taro.
The gunner was hanging against his straps, but he seemed to be at least partially conscious, his large,
protuberant eyes glazed and unfocused, yellowish-red blood running around the fine tendrils that
surrounded his mouth, his four hands twitching slightly.
"Hang on," Byrne called back to him, unsnapping the complex of belts holding him to his couch, then
unplugging the unused emergency oxygen umbilical. "I'll be with you in a minute. Just hang in there."
Byrne tried to lift himself off his couch, but again the waves of pain lashed through his body. Slowly,
grimacing, he levered himself off the couch and down onto the wall that was now a floor, taking stock of
his injuries.
His right leg was broken, along with several ribs, judging from the way his chest felt every time he took a
breath. His entire back was an agony of fire, and his neck felt as though it had just spent a couple of
hours at the wrong end of the Imperial Hangman's rope.
Because of the angle at which the ship had come down, Byrne had to crawl over the communication
panel to get to the gunner, and he did so as gently as possible, dragging his broken leg along the edge of
the panel. He almost screamed from pain as a toggle switch caught on the fabric of his suit, pulling on the
leg and grating the broken ends of the bone together. But, painful though it was, he doubled back and
gently dis-engaged himself from the switch, afraid to pull too hard on it for fear it would further damage
the radio equipment. He had only the roughest idea of where they had come down, and he didn't know
how good a fix Copernicus Base had gotten on them. But he knew that eventually he was going to need
radio communications if they were going to get out of there alive.
Byrne reached the gunner's couch just mo-ments too late. He was releasing the gimbal locks on the
couch to let it swing upright when the O-human shuddered, a froth of bright pink blood spewing from his
mouth. Then he was dead. Byrne looked at him for a moment, then shook his head and began to crawl
away from the couch, back towards the dead communications panel.
The primary communications channel was obviously cut. Otherwise there would have been a roar of
questions coming over the control panel speakers. Byrne switched on the emergency backup, at the
same time releasing the lock on the crash locator and beacon and flicking the red toggle underneath. He
heard a low hum from the speakers as power flooded into the backup system, but that was all. No
voices issued from the gray metal grills over the pilot's couches. Mentally, Byrne reviewed the present
attitude of the ship, then the locations of the various com-munications antennae. They were all under the
ship, and he was sure they had either been ripped completely off or crushed in the landing. There was
only one mast on the upright side of the ship, and although it wasn't a primary communications antenna, it
was one that Byrne thought would, after a fashion, work.
As he quickly ripped the paneling from the front of the communications console, Byrne dis-covered that,
in addition to his other injuries, he also had several broken fingers on his right hand. Using his left, he
began unplugging vibration-proof connectors, reconnecting them in new locations. And as the last
connection was made, he was rewarded with a sudden crackle of sound from the speakers.
"Easy-nine, do you read? Easy-nine, do you have a copy on this transmission?"
"Easy-nine here, Copernicus Base," Byrne croaked into the microphone, spitting up some blood in the
process. "I've got you three-by-five."
"Roger, Easy-nine. We've got you. Is that you, Byrne?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, we have you weak but clear. This is Colonel Carsos." Byrne had served with Carsos the year
before, and he knew him to be a good officer, not likely to panic in an emergency situa-tion. "What's
your status, Byrne?"
Byrne, slightly in shock, chuckled. His status? Terrible! But that wasn't what they wanted to hear.
"We're down, Copernicus Base. But we still have cabin integrity. Second officer and gunner dead."
"How about you, Byrne?" Carsos asked.
"Banged up pretty bad, but I can function."
"We're getting you very weak, Byrne. Your signal is fading in and out badly. Can you switch to your
emergency backup?"
"Negative, Copernicus. Both primary and backup antennae are out. I'm feeding you the emergency
comm signal through the Bee-three-ten telemetry spike."
"Roger. Your signal's too weak to get a good directional fix on your location. What about your crash
locator beacon?"
"The beacon seems to be operational, but if you aren't getting the signal, the antenna for it must be gone,
too." While he was speaking, Byrne quickly checked the connectors for the crash locator beacon, hoping
that one of them might have jarred loose. "Just before the crash, I saw a small crater with three domes
near the center. It looked like the mine head at Wallace, and if it was, I'm someplace just the other side
of it. Possible just into the Apennines."
"That checks with our last radar fix on you, Easy-nine. Which ain't too good, buddy."
"I know," Byrne answered slowly. "Can you get anyone to me from the observatory at Archimedes? I
can't be more than a couple of hundred kilometers from them."
"Negative, Easy-nine. Their only long-range rover is here, picking up supplies. We'll have to get you out
from here, unless you're near a level area where we can put a boat down. There are several jump bugs at
Lambert and I'll have them take a shot at it. But if you're back in the hills, they'll never make it, so I
wouldn't count on it too much."
"Yeah. Well, I can hook the crash locator beacon into the telemetry spike, but then I won't be able to
talk to you."
"That sounds like the hot set-up, Byrne," Carsos said. "How are your consumables?"
"Hang on while I check." Byrne quickly ran his eyes over the readouts on the front panels. He knew he
had plenty of oxygen, but there were two other commodities he needed just as much to stay alive. Water,
for component and cabin cooling, and power, to keep things running.
"Copernicus, everything looks good. The primary water tanks are still registering full, and both are on the
up side of the ship, so I shouldn't have any trouble with them freezing. They'll keep the temperature
livable, if not exactly com-fortable. And both fuel cells are producing, so even though the engines are out
I won't have to touch the batteries for quite a while. I should be able to hold out for at least three weeks."
"It shouldn't take us that long to get to you," Carsos said.
"I sure as hell hope not. But you know as well as I do that getting a rover across here to the Apennines,
then however far back into them you might have to come, isn't something you're going to do in the next
eight hours. Probably not even in the next eight days."
"Roger that, Easy-nine. You didn't exactly pick the best place on the moon to crash. But we'll be
cooking."
"You'd better be, Copernicus Base," Byrne said, "or I'll be freezing. It's only ten days 'til nightfall." He
knew that his chances of surviving the two-week-long lunar night were next to non-existent. "I'm
switching the crash locator beacon to the Bee-three-ten now. I'll come back on the circuit for an update
in one hour."
"Roger, Easy-nine. Hang in there, Byrne. We're on our way."
It took the rescue party nine full days to reach the crash site. Nine days of agony for Byrne. Agony that
could be alleviated only for short periods by the pain medication he found in the emergency kit. Nine
days of laying still in a cramped cabin, six feet in diameter and four-teen feet long, with two dead men,
one T- and one O-human. One of whom had been a shipmate and friend for a long time. Staring at them
be-cause there was no place else to look, while their bodies began to decompose and stink in the humid,
ever-warmer atmosphere of the cabin. Nine days that snapped something in Byrne's mind.
Byrne spent three long months in the base hospital at Copernicus after the rescue. Three months of
slowly healing physical damage, and slower healing psychic damage, his every hour of sleep broken by
nightmares of crashing ships and rotting corpses. Finally, though, he was dis-charged, fit for duty, and he
reported back to his post aboard theNovi Sad, now in a parking orbit around Earth awaiting orders for
her first cruise.
"Colonel William Byrne, reporting as or-dered, sir." Byrne stood stiffly at attention in front of the desk of
General Caldwell, trying to repress the flood of hate that filled his mind and body when he saw the slightly
plump officer shuffling papers from one basket to another, serving out his time in command of the combat
forces aboard theNovi Sad before returning to the politics of the Court and his probable eventu-al
peerage.
"Ah, Byrne. Glad to see you back from your little adventure. There's a lot of work wait-ing for you. At
ease, man. At ease." Caldwell sat back in his chair and lit a cigarette, completely at ease, a slight smirk
on his face.
Something snapped in Byrne's mind, a flood-gate opened that he had held firmly closed since his first
days in the hospital. In a single quick and sure movement he rounded Caldwell's desk, reached down and
grabbed the lapels of the general's jacket, jerking him to his feet. "You bastard!" Byrne said simply, then
he smashed one fist into the general's face, satisfaction flooding into him as he felt Caldwell's nose mash
flat, blood spurting out around the sides of his fist.
Caldwell tried to stumble back away from Byrne, but the younger officer still held him by the jacket with
one hand. Byrne's fist shot out again, thudding into the general's temple, and the senior officer crumpled
to his knees, unable to support himself even with Byrne's clenched hand still holding tight to his lapel.
"Send us out on a mission in an untested ship just to amuse your Court friends," Byrne grunted, whipping
his hand around in a hard slap across Caldwell's face. "Kill two good men to prove what a hot-shot line
officer you are now," he said through clenched teeth as his hand flashed back the other way, splitting the
general's lips open. "I should kill you, you son of a bitch!"
Caldwell groveled on his knees, his lips pouring blood down the front of his uniform, his nose mashed
flat, both eyes rapidly swelling closed. Byrne looked down at him, and slowly the red haze faded from his
mind and he stood there, trembling with reaction to his outburst, the consequences of what he had done
slowly penetrating his mind. With a grimace of distaste he released his grip on the general's jacket, then
turned and walked out of the room. He went straight to his quarters, lying down on his bunk and staring
at the ceiling, waiting for the arrest orders he was sure would be on their way as soon as Caldwell could
round up a Marine guard.
Much to Byrne's growing concern and anxie-ty, it took two full days before the orders he had been
expecting came. Two days before he was called before Admiral MacMillan, captain of theNovi Sad. He
found MacMillan and Caldwell waiting for him, as well as an armed Marine guard, when he arrived on
board.
"You have a choice, Byrne," MacMillan told him, her voice as frosty as the frozen green ice of her eyes.
"A general court martial for striking your commanding officer, or your immediate resignation from the
service."
"Resignation?" Byrne blurted out, surprised at the unexpected turn of events. Surprised at being offered
a choice of actions.
"For the good of the service," the admiral answered, looking down at some papers, unwilling to meet
Byrne's eyes.
"For the good of General Caldwell, you mean," Byrne said, suddenly understanding what was going on.
"If I opt for a court martial, the reasons why I acted as I did would be sure to come out. Which would
put a blot on the gener-al's record and ruin his image at Court."
MacMillan looked up at him sharply, and now there was fire in those green eyes. Byrne couldn't help
thinking that once she must have been an outstandingly beautiful woman, her green eyes and milky
complexion hinting that once her iron-gray hair had been fiery red. He wondered if her present rank came
because of her beauty, as a favor from the Court, or from her ability to com-mand a capital ship.
"Whatever the reasons," she said coldly, "your commanding officer has seen fit to give you a choice in
the matter, Colonel. One that I would not offer, were you an officer under my direct command."
"I assume," Byrne said slowly, "that you will 'stat headquarters requesting that my resignation be
accepted at once?"
"As soon as you write it up, Colonel."
It had been over as simply as that. Five years of service to the Imperium ended in less than an hour.
Three hours after his resignation had been approved, Byrne, now dressed in civilian clothes, had been on
a special shuttle flight from theNovi Sad down to Earth.
The big Imperial field outside Hyderabad was near the nightline when the shuttle landed, and Byrne had
dinner in a little Sirian restaurant on a side street just outside the main gate. In a drugstore he picked up a
few essentials to replace those packed away in his luggage, which he hadn't bothered to pick up after
leaving the shuttle. Luggage filled with uniforms, books of regula-tions, and other accouterments of a
military life he was through with. By 2100 local time he had checked into a small hotel patronized by
laborers from the base, where there was little chance of running into anyone who knew him, and by 2200
he had fallen into a shallow sleep, filled with those same recurring nightmares of crashing ships and rotting
corpses that had haunted his every night since the crash in the Lunar Apennines.
In the morning Byrne caught a PaxAir flight to Denver, where he purchased a cheap suitcase, some
shirts, and an off-the-rack worksuit, after which he registered at an out-of-the-way hotel not far from the
big commercial spacefield. For a week he scoured the shipping line offices and the tramps of half a
hundred worlds in port on Earth for cargo, interviewing masters and mates, line captains and port
stewards for a job, but none were to be had. To secure even the lowliest position aboard a zero-space
ship, he had to belong to the Spaceman's Guild, and even with his savings from five years of service her
could not afford the initiation fee. Finally, in desperation, he secured an appointment with the secretary of
the Guild, hoping for a waiver of the fee because of his training and experience.
"William Byrne to see you, sir," the girl had said as she ushered him into the office of the secretary of the
Spaceman's Guild, after a three-hour wait in an anteroom.
In contrast to the Court-appointed flunkies Byrne had been forced to deal with in the service, Calto
Webb looked like a man who was compe-tent in his job. Tall, with a deep tan on his elongated face,
Webb looked up at Byrne with gray-blue eyes holding a hint of arctic cold. Eyes which told Byrne
nothing of how the man would react to his request for a waiver.
"Mr. Byrne," Webb said, rising from behind his desk and reaching forward to shake hands. His grip was
firm, his handshake brisk. "Please sit down."
Byrne slid an antique-looking chair slightly closer to the desk, then sat down in it, slouching slightly,
consciouslynot sitting at attention, with his legs out in front of him, feet resting against the lower edge of
the desk. Webb glanced down at some papers in front of him, then looked up, and the two men stared at
each other for a mo-ment, sizing each other up, each basically liking what he saw in the other. "I've read
your appli-cation," Webb said finally. He waited for an answer, but Byrne just sat there, looking at him.
"And I'm afraid I have some bad news," Webb said after several seconds of silence.
"You can't waive the fees," Byrne said, a statement rather than a question.
"No, I'm afraid I can't."
"How about extended payment of them, then? Say, half now and half at the end of my first trip?"
"Sorry, but even if you had the full fee in cash, I couldn't accept you into the Guild."
"What? Why the hell not?" Byrne exploded.
"Are the reasons really that important?"
"You're damn right they are!"
"Well, I'm afraid that what it boils down to is that you have made some enemies. Influential enemies."
"Enemies at Court, you mean."
"Exactly." Webb grimaced with distaste. "As much as I'd wish it otherwise, I'm afraid the Guild cannot
operate without Imperial approval. And the word has come down that if we were to accept you into the
Guild, some influential people at Court would bevery unhappy."
"I didn't think I was that important," Byrne said bitterly. "Or Caldwell either, for that matter."
"I don't know who Caldwell is, but you don't have to be important," Webb said. "Just on theout list of
someone whois important. But in your case, you are important, in a way. Very important."
"What do you mean?"
"Your father. So long as Myriad is rich, and not a member of the Imperium, your family, yourself
included, is going to be unpopular with the Court."
"That's ridiculous!" Byrne said. "I haven't even seen my father, or any other member of my family, in five
years. I'm not even a citizen of Myriad any more."
"But you're still your father's son, and po-tentially the Citizen of Myriad. Should some-thing unfortunate
happen to your brother, that is."
"Unlikely."
"Be that as it may, so long as Myriad is rich, the Empire will want it. And, as we both know, those very
riches are what keeps Myriad strong enough to stay out of the Empire. And so long as that situation
holds, there are people at Court who will make their displeasure known to anyone who thinks of hiring
you as a spaceman. Or as anything else."
"That doesn't leave me much choice except to return to Myriad, then."
"That's entirely up to you, of course. However, if I might make one suggestion?"
Byrne nodded, already rising to his feet.
"Not all ships in space are crewed by mem-bers of the Guild, although all who port here must carry
Guild crewmen. And not all captains demand documentation of ability."
"I'm sorry," Byrne said, settling back into his chair. "I'm not sure I understand."
"You might find it easier to get a berth in one of the outsystems. And easier still if you didn't let your
future employer know who you are, or your background."
"I see. Well, thank you very much for your assistance, sir."
"Sorry I couldn't be more helpful."
"Yeah."
Byrne had a few drinks at a dive near the Spaceman's Guild tower, and he was barely started on his
second one before he made up his mind to accept Webb's advice. He had no desire to return to Myriad,
and there was no-thing for him on Earth or any of the nearer systems of the Imperium. Which left only the
frontier worlds for him, out where the wave of T-human expansion was meeting and interact-ing with the
other spacefaring races of the galaxy.
An hour later, Byrne had bought one-way passage on a passenger and cargo ship headed out-ward.
Chapter Two
The planet was a healthy one, with a native race that had barely graduated into the Iron Age before the
first visitors arrived from space. Within three hundred years, the T- and O-human population of
Cassandra had equaled the native, both from a high birth rate and immigration from other, more crowded
worlds closer to the Imperi-al center. And, thanks to its location near the edge of the small globular
cluster M-46, which contained a number of new colonies, Cassandra quickly became a shipping and ship
manufactur-ing center. It was there, six thousand light years from the Imperial Court, that Byrne hoped to
find a new life for himself.
Ten days after landing on Cassandra, Byrne found himself in an outlying section of the main spacefield,
looking up at the squat hull of a small freighter, almost lost between the towering globes of two
Pseudo-bug slavers in port to take on supplies before heading in again toward the galactic center. The
once highly polished sides of the ship were badly pocked from light-speed collisions with interstellar dust,
and when Byrne approached the open lock he got a whiff of smells that told him of the many cargoes the
old ship had carried, from farm machinery to farm animals, and probably even an occasional load of
colonists too poor to afford transporta-tion on the giant ships that specialized in found-ing and servicing
new colonies.
Byrne stepped into the lock, which was standing open, and after looking around to see if there was
anyone on watch he punched the comm button for the bridge.
"Yeah? Who's there and what do you want?" The voice spoke in blurry Ulishi, and Byrne had the feeling
that the blurriness wasn't from a malfunction in the comm circuit. It sounded more like the voice on the
other end of the comm line had been drinking, and for quite a while.
"William Byrne, and I want a job."
"Are you T-human, and have you ever been in space before?"
"Yes on both questions."
"Then you've got a job—sight unseen, aboard the fast and commodious freighterKassala. Come on up."
Byrne rode the lift toward the bridge, half-way up the ship's three-hundred-foot length. A small corridor
connected the lift shaft and the bridge, and as he walked along he noticed an open door with light spilling
out into the hallway, highlighting the blistered paint on the walls and accumulations of dirt where the walls
and floor met. The light was spilling from the captain's flight cabin, and it was there he found the master of
theKassala.
A decrepit military acceleration couch was bolted to the floor near one wall, and in it a large man lay at
ease. From a hollow recess in the right hand arm that had once held a damage control readout a bottle
protruded, and in the man's hand was a glass filled with a milky, fuming liquid that Byrne supposed was
maha, the slightly narcotic drink that had become so popular after its introduction into T-human space by
摘要：

LookBacktoEarthByDonPfeil AMANORBOOK ManorBooks,Inc.432ParkAvenueSouthNewYork,NewYork10016 Copyright1977,byManorBooks,Inc.Allrightsreserved.Publishedbyarrangementwiththeauthor.PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica. ISBNCODE0-532-15299-9ChapterOneWilliamByrnesquirmedrestlesslyinthecenterseatofthefrontrow...

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分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：103 页 大小：321.73KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-23

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