Andre Norton - The X Factor 1

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The X Factor
By
Andre Norton
Contents
I4
II11
III18
IV..25
V..32
VI39
VII46
VIII53
IX..60
X..68
XI75
XII82
XIII90
XIV..97
XV..104
XVI111
XVII119
XVIII127
I
Even nighttime on Vaanchard was disturbing. It was not a time of peace in which one could hide. There
were gemlike glints in the garden path, a soft luminescence to the growing things, new scents and—
Diskan Fentress hunched over, his chin almost touching his knees, fingertips thrust into his ears. He had
closed his eyes to his surroundings, too—though there was no way to filter those scents out of the air he
breathed. His mouth worked; he was afraid he was going to be thoroughly and disastrously sick, right
here where his shame would be public. Not that anyone would let him see their disgust, of course. The
elaborate pretense that Diskan Fentress was one of them would continue and continue and continue—
He swallowed convulsively.
The greenish moonlight had reached the edge of the path now, awaking the glints to crystalline brilliance.
A new fragrance tantalized his nostrils, but not aggressively. Diskan could not imagine anything in this
garden as aggressive. When created and brought to perfection by the Vaans, a pleasure place was
subtle.
Diskan fought a silent struggle against his heaving insides, against the terrible bonds this garden and the
building from which he had fled, this city, this world, had laid upon him. His trouble reached back farther
than just his coming here to Vaanchard—to a day when Ulken the Overseer had brought a stranger
down to the pond back on Nyborg, had called Diskan out from the murky water, where he stood up to
his middle, green slime smearing his bare body, and had spoken to him as if he were a—a thing—not a
man with feelings and a mind, if not a body, like his fellows.
Now Diskan's breath came in a ragged sob. His eyes might register the path and the strange growth, if
he wanted to look, all the elfin glory of the night, but he saw the past now.
His troubles had not begun by the pond either, but back down the trail of years. His mouth shaped a
grimace, half a snarl of frustrated rage. Way back, that beginning—
He could not remember any time when he had not been aware of the truth, that Diskan Fentress was a
reject—a badly working piece of human machinery that could be turned only to the simplest and dirtiest
of jobs. He did not know how to use the outsize share of strength in his poorly coordinated body,
breaking when he wanted to mend or cherish. And his mind functioned almost as badly—slowly and
stupidly.
Why? How many times had he demanded that in the past, ever since he could think and wonder at all!
But he had learned quickly not to ask it of anyone but himself—and that impersonal power that might or
might not have had a hand in his misfashioning.
Back on Nyborg he had—would they say—"adjusted"? At least being used for the brute-strength jobs
left him mostly to himself during the day, and that was escape of a kind, something he did not have here.
Then, in spite of shrinking from that memory, Diskan thought again of the scene by the pond. Ulken,
filthy, coarse, but still judged infinitely higher in the community scale than Diskan, standing there, a sly grin
on his face, shouting as if his victim were deaf in addition to all the rest.
And the man with him—
Diskan closed his eyes, licked his lips before he swallowed again, willing himself not to—no, no!
That man, lithe, of middle height, all feline grace and ease, his fine body well displayed in the
brown-green uniform of Survey, the silver comet of a First-in Scout on his breast! The stranger had
looked so clean, so close to the ideal of Diskan's haunted dreams that he had simply stared at him, not
answering Ulken's shouted orders—until he saw that blackness on the Scout's face, just before the Scout
had turned on Ulken. The overseer had shriveled and backed off. But when the Scout had looked at
Diskan once more, Ulken had grinned, maliciously, before he slouched away.
"You are—Diskan Fentress?" Disbelief, yes, there had been disbelief in that, enough to awaken in
Diskan some of the old defiance.
He had waded out of the water, pulling up fistfuls of coarse grass to rub the slime from him.
"I'm Fentress."
"So am I. Renfry Fentress."
Diskan had not really understood, not for a whole moment of suspended time. He had gone right on
wiping his big clumsy body. Then he answered with the truth as he had known it.
"But you're dead!"
"There's sometimes a light-year stretch between presumption and actuality," the Scout had replied, but
he continued to stare. And a small hurt, hidden far inside Diskan's overgrown frame of flesh and bone,
grew.
What a meeting between father and son! But how could Renfry Fentress have sired—him? Scouts,
assigned for periods of time to planet duty, were encouraged to contract Service marriages. This grew
from the need to breed a type of near mutant species necessary to carry on the exploration of the galaxy.
Certain qualities of mind and body were inherited, and those types were encouraged to reproduce their
kind. So, Renfry Fentress had taken Lilha Clyas as his wife on Nyborg, for the duration of his assignment
there, a recognized and honored association, with a pension for Lilha and a promising future for any
children of their union.
In due time, Renfry Fentress had been reassigned. He then formally severed the marriage by Decree of
Departure and raised ship, without knowing whether there would be a child, since his orders were a
matter of emergency. Eight months later Diskan had been born, and in spite of the skill of the medics, it
had been a hard birth, so hard that his mother had not survived his arrival.
He did not remember the early days in the government creche, but the personality scanner had reported
almost at once that Diskan Fentress was not Service material. Something had gone wrong in all that
careful planning. He was like neither his father nor his mother, but a retrocession, too big, too clumsy, too
slow of thought and speech to be considered truly one of a space-voyaging generation.
There had been other tests, many of them. He could not recall them separately now, only that they were
one long haze of frustration, mental pain, discouragement, and sometimes fear. For some years, while he
had been a small child, he had been tested again and again. The authorities could not believe that he was
as imperfect a specimen as the machines continued to declare.
Then he had refused to be so tried again, running away twice from the creche school. Finally one of the
authorities, after a week of breakage, sullen rages, and violence, had suggested assigning him to the labor
pool. He had been thirteen then, larger than most full-grown men. They had been just a little afraid of him.
Diskan had a flash of satisfaction when he remembered that. But he had known better than to try to settle
problems with his fists. He had no desire to be condemned to personality erasure. He might be stupid,
but he was still Diskan Fentress.
So he had gone from one heavy work job to the next, and the years had passed—five, six? He was not
quite sure. Then Renfry Fentress had come back to Nyborg, and everything had changed—for the
worse, certainly for the worse!
From the beginning. Diskan had been suspicious of this father out of space. Renfry had shown no
disappointment, no outward sign, after that first moment of blank survey at their meeting, that he thought
his son a failure. Yet Diskan knew that all this existed behind the other's apparent acceptance.
Renfry's attitude became only another "why," giving Diskan almost the same torture as the first "why" had
always held. Why did Renfry Fentress take such trouble to search out a son he had never seen? When
Diskan had been born and his mother had died, the Scout had been traced by the Service as was the
regulation, so that he might express his wishes concerning the future of his child. And the answer had
come back, "Missing, presumed dead," an epitaph for many a First-in Scout.
But Fentress had not died in the black wastes of space, where a meteor hit had doomed his ship to drift.
Instead, he had been picked up by an alien explorer, outward bound on a quest similar to his own, the
hunt for planets to be occupied by a rapidly expanding race.
And among the people of his rescuer, Renfry had found a home, a new wife. When he was again able to
establish contact with his own people, he had received the now years-old report of his son's birth. Since
his new marriage, happy as it was, could have no offspring, he had hunted that son, eager to bring him to
Vaanchard, where Renfry had taken his optional discharge.
Vaanchard was wonder, beauty, the paradise long dreamed of by Renfry's species. Its natives were all
grace, charm, intelligence governed by imagination—a world without visible flaw, until Renfry brought his
son to shatter the peace of his household, not once but many times over!
Diskan dropped his hands from his ears, suffering the discomfort of sound. He held them up to survey
the calloused palms, the roughened fingers. In spite of soothing lotions, the fingertips could still snag fine
garments, window hangings, any bit of fabric he touched. They could smash, too, as they had tonight!
There was a smear of blood across the ball of his right thumb. So he had more than memory to remind
him of what had happened back there, where the bell-toned notes were rising and falling in a wistful
pattern of music that was not human but that sang in the heart, was a part of the body. Light, sound, and,
now that he had unplugged his ears, he could hear laughter. It was not aimed at him. They were so kind,
so intuitive. They did not use laughter as a weapon; they did not use any weapons. They only
overlooked, forgave, made allowances for him—eternally they did that!
If he could only hate them as he had hated Ulken and his like! There was a fuel in hatred to feed a man's
strength, but he could not hate Drustans, nor Rixa, nor Eyinada, their mother and now his father's wife.
You cannot hate those who are perfect by your standards; you can only hate yourself for being what you
are.
The movement of his fingers enlarged the bead of blood on his thumb. It trickled sluggishly, and Diskan
licked it away.
"Deesskaann?"
The lilting song of his name—Rixa! She would come and find him. There would be no mention of shards
of gem blue on the white floor. No one would ever mention again a priceless wonder that had been
reduced to splinters in an instant after centuries of treasuring. If they had raged, if they had once said
what he knew they thought—that would make it easier. Now Rixa would want him to go back with her.
No!
Diskan stood up. The carved bench swayed. He watched with a second of detached acceptance—was
that about to crash into ruins, too? Then he stepped behind the seat, moving with the exaggerated care
that had been a part of him ever since he had come to Vaanchard, knowing at the same time it would be
no use, that he would trample, smash, blunder, that wreckage would mark any path he would take
through this dream world.
He could not retreat to his own quarters; he had done that too many times in the past few days. They
would look for him there first. Nor could he continue to hide out in the garden with Rixa on the hunt.
Diskan surveyed the lighted building. Music, the coming and going of forms before all those windows, no
hiding place unless—
One darkened room on the lower floor— He made a hurried count to place those two windows. He
could not be sure, but they were dark and drew him, as a hurt animal might search out a hollow log for
temporary shelter.
The tide of his misery ebbed a little as he bent his mind to the problem of reaching that promised retreat
undetected. Clumps of bushes dotted the ground, and he could avoid the one glowing statue. Under the
music and voices from the house, he heard the trilling call of a night flying varch. A varch! With a little
luck—
"Deesskaann?" Rixa was on the path not far from the bench.
He made for the next bush and crouched behind it. Now he centered a fierce concentration on the
varch, visualizing the wide green wings with their tipping of gem dust, which created a filmy aura when it
flew, the slender neck, the top-knotted head. Varch—Diskan thought varch, tried to feel varch.
Suddenly that call sounded to his right, beginning as a trill and ending in a squeak of terror. The green
body flashed out of the shadow, winged toward the path. Diskan heard a second startled cry—from
Rixa. But he was on the move, slipping from one bit of cover to the next, until he stood under the nearest
of those dark windows, reaching up for the sill. No mistake now—no clumsy fall. Please, no break—just
let him get into the dark and the solitude he must have!
And for once, one of his formless prayers was answered. Diskan spilled through the window to the
floor, the sweep of curtains veiling him. He sat there, panting, not with physical effort, but with the strain
of steeling himself to master his body. It was several seconds before he parted the curtains to inspect the
room.
A single low light let him see that he had taken refuge where indeed they might not look for him—the
room that was Renfry's. Here were kept the travel disks from his Scout trips, the trophies from his star
wandering, all mounted and displayed. It was a room that Diskan had never before had the courage to
enter on his own.
On his hands and knees, he crawled from behind the curtains, to sit crouched in the middle of the open
space, far from anything he could brush against or knock over. He laced his heavy arms about his
upthrust knees and looked about him.
A man's life was in this room. What land of showing would his life make if the remnants of his passing
were set on shelves for viewing? Broken bits and pieces, smudged and torn fabrics—and the slow,
stupid words, the wrong actions that would not be tangible but that made smudges and tears inside
himself and others. Diskan's hands went up again to his head, not to muffle the sighing music, the hum of
voices from beyond walls and door, but to rub back and forth across his forehead, as if to ease the dull
ache that had been ever present during his waking hours on Vaanchard. But he did not seem stupid to
himself, at least not until he tried to translate into action or words what he thought—as if inside him there
was a bad connection so that he could never communicate clearly with his own body, let alone with those
about him.
There were things he could do! Diskan's mouth for the first time in hours relaxed from the wry twist,
even shaped a shadow smile that would have surprised him had he at that moment faced a mirror. Yes,
he could do some things, and not, he thought, too clumsily either. That varch now— he had thought of
the varch, and then he had thought of what it must do—and it had done it just as he wished, and with
more speed and skill than his own hands carried out any of his brain's commands.
That had happened before, when he was alone. He had never dared try it before others, since he was
rated as strange enough without that additional taint of wrongness. He could communicate with
animals—which probably meant he was far closer to them than to his own kind, that he was a slip-back
on the climbing path of evolution. But the varch had distracted Rixa for the necessary moments.
Diskan relaxed. The room was still, the sounds of merriment more muffled here than in the garden. And
this chamber was less alien in its appointments than any other in the huge palace dwelling. The rich fabrics
at the window were native, but their colors were not so muted here. They were warmer. And save for
one lacy spiral object on the wide desk-table, there were none of the fragile native ornaments. The rack
of travel disks might have been taken out of a spacer—perhaps it had been.
He studied that rack, his lips shaping numbers as he counted the disks, each in its own slot. More than a
hundred worlds—keys to more than a hundred worlds—all visited at some time or another by Renfry
Fen tress. And any one of those, fitted into the auto-pilot of a spacer could take a man to that world—
Blue tapes first—worlds explored by Fentress, now open for colonization—ten of those, a record of
which to be proud. Yellow disks—worlds that would not support human life. Green—inhabited by native
races, open for trade, closed to human settlement. Red—Diskan eyed the red. There were three of those
at the bottom of the case.
Red meant unknown—worlds on which only one landing had been made, reported, but not yet checked
out fully as useful or otherwise. Empty of intelligent life, yes, possible for human life as to climate and
atmosphere, but planets that posed some kind of puzzle. What could such puzzles be, Diskan speculated,
for a moment pulled from his own concerns to wonder. Any one of a hundred reasons could mark a
world red—to await further exploration.
Keys to worlds—suppose one could use one? Diskan's hands dropped again to his knees, but his
fingers crooked a little. That thinking, which was clear until he tried to translate it into action, picked at
him.
A blue world—another Nyborg or Vaanchard. A green—no, he had no desire to face another alien
race, and his landing on such a planet would be marked at once. Yellow, that was death, escape of a
sort, but he was too young and still not desperate enough to think seriously of that final door. But those
three red—
His tongue crossed his lips. For a long while he had drawn into himself, refused to initiate action that
always ended in failure for him. There was a key to be used only by a very reckless man, one who had
nothing to lose. Diskan Fentress could be considered as such. He could never be content on Vaanchard.
All he asked or wanted was what they would not grant him—solitude and freedom from all they were
and he could not be.
But could he do it? There was the tape, and outside this house, not too far away, was the port. On that
landing space were berthed small, fast spacers. For once his background would be an asset. Who would
believe that the stupid off-worlder would contemplate stealing a ship when he had no pilot training, when
the control quarters of a small ship would be so cramped for his hulking body? It was a stupid plan, but
he was stupid.
Diskan did not get to his feet. Intent even now on making no sound, no move that might betray him, on
all fours like the animal he believed he was, he reached the tape rack. His big hand hovered over the
three red disks. Which? Not that it mattered. His fingers closed about the middle one, transferred it to a
belt pocket—but that left an easily noticeable gap. Diskan made a second shift at the rack; now that gap
was at the end of the row, in the shadow. If he had any luck at all, it might not be noticed for some time.
He was rising when he heard it, the click of the door latch. Two steps would carry him to cover. Dared
he take them? But again, for once, body and brain worked together. He did not stumble over his own
feet, lurch against the table to send the ornament crashing, or make any other mistake; he got safely
behind the window curtains before the door opened.
II
Nothwithstanding the half light, the figure that entered shimmered. Frost stars glinted from a wide collar,
from a belt of state. Drustans! Diskan flattened himself still closer to the window frame, felt it bite
painfully into his thighs, tried to breathe as shallowly as possible. Rixa was bad enough, but to confront
D.rustans, her brother, would be a double defeat.
The Vaan youth moved with all the grace of his kind to the desk-table and hesitated there for an instant.
Diskan expected him at any moment to wheel, face the window, and draw the skulker out of hiding by
the very force of his will. There would be no change in the grave concern of his expression, of course. He
would continue to be correct, always able to do the proper thing at the proper time and to do it well.
A small smolder of dull anger still glowed in Diskan, perhaps fed by the fact that in this room he had
been able to make a decision, to carry it through without mishap. To surrender now to Drustans would
be a special sourness.
But if the Vaan had come for Diskan, nosed him out in some manner—and Diskan was willing to
concede that these aliens had powers he did not understand—then Drustans was not making the right
moves, for his pause by the table had been only momentary. He went on now to kneel at the tape rack.
Diskan's own hand pressed against the belt pocket. Did— could Drustans have picked, out of the air,
the theft? Yes, the Vaan's hand was at the slots of the red tapes! But why—how—?
Drustans plucked out one of the disks—the very one Diskan had moved to fill the empty space. Still on
his knees, the Vaan tapped the disk with a forefinger and studied it. Then he tucked it into a belt pocket
and, as quickly and silently as he had come, left the room.
Diskan drew a deep breath. So, he had not been after him but had come after the tape. And that could
mean trouble because of the switch in disks. Suppose Renfry had sent his alien stepson to get the tape for
reference. There were at least three men here tonight who would be interested in information on "red"
planets—a Free-Trader captain, Isin Ginzar; an attache from the Zacathan embassy, Zlismak; and
another retired Scout, Bazilee Alpern.
And once the mistake was discovered, Renfry would come here—which meant either Diskan must
move at once, tonight, or he faced just another ignominious failure, with more shame and humiliation. He
could replace the disk in another slot, let them believe a mistake had been made in filing, which was easy
enough—but he could not make himself cross those few feet and put back his key, relinquish his plan. He
had accomplished this all himself, thought it out, done it. And he was going to follow through—he had to!
There was nothing he wanted to take with him from this house but that which was already in his belt. It
was night. Once out of the garden, he could easily get to the space port. He knew the geography of this
small strip of territory well enough. And, Diskan realized, if he did not attempt escape now, he never
would; he could not nerve himself to another try.
He swung through the window. The garden was a triangle, its narrowest point extending out from the
house, and that point gave access to a side street. He looked down at himself. There was a smudge
across the breast of his tunic. He was never able to wear clothing for more than a few moments without
collecting stains or tears. Luckily, he was dressed very plainly for a feast day, no frost-star collar, none of
the splendor Drustans and the other Vaans considered fitting. He might be taken for a port laborer,
wandering lost, if he were sighted.
With caution, Diskan worked his way to the spear point of the triangle. The house was very much alight,
but it was close to midnight, and they would be serving supper in the banquet hall. Rixa must have long
since given up the search for him in the garden. He must use well what time he had.
Somehow he scrambled over the lacework of the wall, meant more as a frame for the garden than any
barrier. One sleeve tore loose from the shoulder, and now he had a smarting scratch, oozing blood,
above his elbow. His dress boots made no sound on the pavement. Their soft soles were thin enough to
let him feel the stone. But that did not matter—he had gone barefoot so long that his feet were tougher
perhaps than the fabric of the boots themselves.
This way—to the corner, then to the first side turning— and that led straight to the port. He would enter
quite far from the small ships he wanted, but once he was actually at the field, he could manage. This
sudden small self-confidence was heady. Just as in the old tales, you obtained a talisman of sorts and then
you were invincible. He had his talisman in the belt pocket, beneath his hand, and now there bubbled
inside of him the belief that the rest would follow, that he would find the ship and escape—
Such a spacer would be on two controls, one for manual and one for travel tape. Diskan scowled as he
tried to remember small details. All ships took off by pattern, and he dared not ask the Control for a
particular one. So, he would have to risk the other way—feed in his tape, set on auto-control, go into
freeze himself—and just hope. And the steps for that—? Well, Renfry, striving hard to find a common
interest between them back on Nyborg while they had been waiting for exit papers, had talked about
himself and his work when he discovered Diskan uncommunicative. And Diskan had listened, well
enough now, he hoped, to get him off Vaanchard.
The field was lighted in one section. A liner must have just set down within the hour, as there was activity
about one sky-pointing ship. Diskan watched closely and then moved forward, walking with a sureness
of purpose. He paused by a pile of shipping cartons and hoisted one to his shoulder, then set out briskly
on a course that angled toward his goal. To the casual glance, he hoped, he would be a laborer—one of
those selected for the handling of cargo for which machines could not be trusted.
He dared not stumble—he must keep his mind on those slim small ships in their cradles ahead. He must
think of his arms, of his feet, of his unruly body, and of what he was going to do when he got inside a
space lock. He would mount to the control cabin, strap in, feed the tape disk to the directive, then set the
freeze needle, take the perlim tablets—
Diskan was under the shadow of a trader before he thought it safe to dump his burden and quicken his
pace to a trot. The first two of the smaller ships were still too large for his purpose, but the third, a racer
made more for use within this solar system, between Vaanchard and her two inhabitable neighbors, was
better—though he did not know if it could be used to voyage in deep space.
However, such a ship could be set for maximum take-off, to wrench him out of the influence of the
control tower. And speed was an important factor. For such a ship there would be a watch robot.
Theft was not a native vice on Vaanchard, but all ports had a floating population of which a certain
portion was untrustworthy. No racer was ever left without a watch robot. But Diskan had some useful
information from Nyborg, learned by watching his companions at the labor depot. Robots were the
enemies of the strong-back boys. When rations were scanty or poor, the human laborers had learned
ways to circumvent the mechanical watchdogs at warehouses—though it was a tricky business.
Diskan glanced at his big, calloused hands. He had never tried to discon a watcher before. That was a
task he had believed he was too clumsy to handle, but tonight he was going to have to do it!
He studied the ship in the launching cradle carefully. The port was closed, the ladder up, and the watcher
would control both of those. But a watcher was not only there to check invasion; it was also attuned to
any change in the ship. Diskan swung down into the cradle, put where the port inspectors had their
scan-plate. He forced himself to move slowly. There must be no mistake in the false set of the dial he
wanted. Sweat beaded his cheeks and chin when he achieved that bit of manipulation.
Up out of the pit—to wait. A grating noise from above marked the opening port. The ladder fed out
smoothly. This was it! Diskan tensed. The watch robot, once out of the ship, would sense him instantly,
come for him. A watcher could not kill or even do bodily harm; it only captured and held its prisoner to
be dealt with by human authority.
And Diskan must allow himself to be so captured to serve his purpose. There was a clatter; the robot
swung down the ladder and turned quickly to rush him. A thief would have run, tried to dodge. Diskan
stood very still. The first rush of the machine slackened. It might have been disconcerted by his waiting
for it, wondering if he had some legitimate reason to be there. Now if he had known the code word of its
conditioning, he would have had nothing in the world to fear, but he did not have that knowledge.
A capture net whirled out, flicked about him, drew Diskan toward the machine, and he went without
struggling. The net, meant to handle a fighter, was loose about him. He was almost up to his captor when
he sprang—not away from but toward the robot. And for the first time that Diskan could remember, his
heavy bulk of body served him well. He crashed against the machine, and the force of that meeting
rocked the robot off balance. It went down, dragging Diskan with it, but his arm was behind its body,
and before they had rolled over, he had thrust one forefinger into the sensitive direction cell.
Pain such as he had never known, running from his finger up his arm to the shoulder—the whole world
was a haze of that pain. But somehow Diskan jerked away, held so much to his purpose that he had
dragged himself part way up the ladder before his consciousness really functioned clearly again. Those
who had told him of this trick had always used a tool to break the cell. To do it by finger was lunacy on a
level they would not have believed possible. Diskan, racked with pain, stumbled through the hatch.
Sweating and gasping, he got to his feet, slammed his good hand down on the close button, and then
swayed on—up one more level. The wall lights glowed as he went, obeying the command triggered by
his body heat. He had a blurred glimpse of the cradle of the pilot's seat and half fell into it. Somehow he
managed to lean forward, to fumble the disk out of his pocket and into the auto-pilot, to thumb down the
controls. The spacer came to life and took over. Around Diskan arose the cradle of the seat. His injured
hand was engulfed in a pad that appeared out of nowhere. He felt the stab of a needle as the tremble of
the atomics began to vibrate the walls.
Diskan was already half into freeze and did not hear, save as a blur of meaningless words, the demand
broadcast as those in Control suddenly realized an unauthorized take-off was in progress. He was under
treatment for an injured pilot as the racer made its dart, at maximum, up from Vaanchard on the guide of
the red tape.
To a man in freeze, time did not exist. Measure of it began again for Diskan with a sharp, demanding
clang, a noise biting at his very flesh and bones. He fought the pressure of that noise, the feeling of the
necessity for responding to it. Opening his eyes wearily, he found himself facing a board of levers,
switches, flashing lights. Two of those lights were an ominous red. Diskan knew nothing of piloting, but
the smooth beat of the Scout ship that had taken him to Vaanchard in his father's company was lacking.
There was instead a pulsation, an ebb and flow of power on a broken beat.
Another light turned red.
"Condition critical!"
Diskan's head jerked against the padded surface of the cradle. The words were mechanical and came
out of the walls around him.
"Damage to the fifth part. Going on emergency for landing! Repeat: going on emergency for landing!"
摘要：

ScannedbyHighroller.V1.0ProofedmoreorlessbyHighroller.V1.1AdditionalproofingandreformattingbyWordsmith.TheXFactorByAndreNorton ContentsI4II11III18IV..25V..32VI39VII46VIII53IX..60X..68XI75XII82XIII90XIV..97XV..104XVI111XVII119XVIII127 IEvennighttimeonVaanchardwasdisturbing.Itwasnotatimeofpeaceinwhich...

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分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：103 页 大小：355.83KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-24

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