A. Bertram Chandler - The Inheritors

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The Inheritors
The Inheritors
A. Bertram Chandler
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To: Flag Officer in Charge of Lindisfarne Base
From: Drongo Kane
Subject: Piratical action by Lieutenant Commander John Grimes
Sir,
I regret to have to report that while my vessel was proceeding on her lawful occasions she was wantonly
attacked by your Seeker, under the command of your Lieutenant Grimes. Commander Grimes not only
used his armament to impede the embarkation of fare-paying passengers, subjecting them to a sleep gas
barrage, but also fired upon Southerly Buster herself. Later he attempted to ram my ship after she had
lifted off…
For my favorite aelurophobe
1
Grimes was on the carpet—neither for the first nor the last time.
He stood stiffly in front of the vast, highly polished desk behind which sat Admiral Buring, of the
Federation's Survey Service. His prominent ears were angrily flushed but his rugged face was
expressionless.
The admiral's pudgy hands played with the bulky folder that was before him. His face, smooth and
heavy, was as expressionless as Grimes's. His voice was flat.
He said, “Commodore Damien warned me about you when you were transferred to my command. Not
that any warning was necessary. For one so young you have achieved a considerable degree of
notoriety.” He paused expectantly, but Grimes said nothing. Buring continued, but now with a hint of
feeling in his voice. “My masters—who, incidentally, are also yours—are far from amused at your latest
antics. You know—you should know—that interference, especially by junior officers, in the internal
affairs of any world whatsoever, regardless of the cultural or technological level of the planet in
question, is not tolerated. I concede that there were extenuating circumstances, and that the new rulers of
Sparta speak quite highly of you…” The thick eyebrows, like furry, black caterpillars, arched
incredulously. “Nonetheless…”
The silence was so thick as to be almost tangible. Grimes decided that it was incumbent upon himself to
break it.
“Sir?”
“Nonetheless, Lieutenant Commander, your continued presence at Base is something of an
embarrassment, especially since a party of vips, political vips at that, is due here very shortly. Some
commission or other, touring the galaxy at the taxpayer's expense. I don't want you around so that
politicians can ask you silly questions—to which, I have no doubt, you would give even sillier answers.
“Furthermore, this whole Spartan affair has blown up into a minor crisis in interplanetary politics. Both
the Duchy of Waldegren and the Empire of Waverley are talking loudly about spheres of influence.” The
admiral allowed himself the suspicion of a smile, “In any sort of crisis, Grimes, there is one thing better
than presence of inind…”
“And that is, sir?” asked Grimes at last.
“Absence of body. Ha. So I'm doing you a good turn, sending you out in Seeker, on a Lost Colony hunt.
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There have been persistent rumors of one out in the Argo Sector. Go and find it—or get lost yourself.
I'm easy.”
“Maintenance, sir…” said Grimes slowly. “Repairs… stores… manning…”
“They're your business, Captain. No, I'm not promoting you, merely according you the courtesy title due
to the commanding officer of a ship. You look after those no doubt boring details. And ”—he made a
major operation of looking at his watch—“I want you off Lindisfarne by sixteen-hundred hours local
time tomorrow.”
Grimes looked at his own watch. He had just seventeen hours, twelve minutes and forty-three seconds in
which to ensure that his ship was, in all respects, ready for space. Maintenance, he knew, was well in
hand. There were no crew deficiencies. Taking aboard essential stores would not occupy much time.
Even so…
“I'd better be getting on with it, sir,” he said.
“You'd bloody well better. I'll send your orders down to you later.”
Grimes put on his cap, saluted smartly and strode out of the admiral's office.
2
She was a survey ship rather than a warship, was Seeker. The Survey Service, in its first beginnings, had
been just that—a survey service. But aliens being what they are—and humans being what they are—
police work, on large and small scales, had tended to become more important than mere exploration and
charting. The Survey Service, however, had not quite forgotten its original function. It maintained a few
ships designed for peaceful rather than warlike pursuits, and Seeker was a member of this small
squadron. Nonetheless, even she packed quite a wallop.
Lieutenant Commander John Grimes was her captain. His last assignment, during which he had
stumbled upon a most peculiar Lost Colony, had been census taking. Now he had been actually sent out
to find a Lost Colony. He suspected that anything might happen, and probably would. It wasn't that he
was accident prone. He was just a catalyst.
Nothing had happened yet; after all, it was early in the voyage. He had lifted from Lindisfarne exactly
on time, driving through the atmosphere smoothly and easily, maintaining his departure trajectory until
he was clear of the Base Planet's Van Aliens. Then, with the inertial drive shut down, the ship had been
turned about her short axis until she was lined up, with due allowance for drift, on the target star. The
Mannschenn Drive had been started, the inertial drive restarted—and passage was commenced.
Satisfied, he had filled and lit his pipe, and when it was going well had ordered, “Deep space routine,
Mr. Saul.” He had made his way to his quarters below and abaft the control room and then, ensconced in
his easy chair, had opened the envelope containing his orders.
The first sheet of the bundle of papers had contained nothing startling. You will proceed to the vicinity of
the star Gamma Argo and conduct a preliminary survey of the planets in orbit about same, devoting
especial attention to any of such bodies capable of supporting human life. “Mphm…” he grunted. The
rest of the page consisted of what he referred to as “the usual guff.”
At the head of the next page was the sentence that brought an expression of interest to his face. We have
reason to believe that there is a humanoid-or possibly human-settlement on the fourth planet of this
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system. Should this settlement exist it improbable that it is a hitherto undiscovered Lost Colony. You are
reminded that your duties are merely to conduct an investigation, and that you are not, repeat not, to
interfere in the internal affairs of the colony.
“Mphm,” grunted Grimes again. Noninterference was all very well, but at times it was hard to maintain
one's status as a mildly interested spectator.
Appended hereto are reports from our agents at Port Llangowan, on Silitria, at Port Brrooun, on
Drroomoorr, at Port Mackay, on Rob Roy, at Port Forinbras, on Elsinore, at…
“Mphm.” The Intelligence Branch seemed to be earning its keep, for a change. Grimes turned to the first
report and read:
From Agent X17S3 (Commander, I.B., F.S.S.)
Dated at Port Llangowan, May 5, Year 171 Silurian (17/13157 TS)
To O.I.C. Intelligence, Federation's Survey Service, Port Woomera, Centralia, Earth.
Sir,
POSSIBLE LOST COLONY IN ARGO SECTOR
I have to report the possibility that there is a hitherto undiscovered Lost Colony in the Argo Sector,
apparently on a planet in orbit about Gamma Argo.
It is my custom, whilst stationed on this world, to spend my evenings in the Red Dragon tavern, a
hostelry that seems to be the favorite drinking place of whatever merchant spacemen are in port.
On the evening of May 3 several officers from the Dog Star Line's Pomeranian were lined up at the bar,
and were joined there by officers of the same company's Corgi, newly berthed. As was to be expected,
the personnel of the two vessels were old friends or acquaintances.
The table at which I was seated was too far from the bar for me to overhear the conversation, but I was
able to make use of my Mark XVII recorder, playing the recording back later that night in the privacy of
my lodgings. The spool has been sent to you under separate cover, but herewith is a suitably edited
transcript of what was said, with everything of no importance–e.g. the usual friendly blasphemies,
obscenities and petty company gossip–deleted.
First Mate of Pomeranian: And where the hell have you been hiding yourselves? You should have been
in before us. I suppose that you got lost.
Second Mate of Corgi: I never get tost.
First Mate of Pomeranian: Like hell you don't. I remember when you got your sums wrong when we were
together in the old Dalmation, and we finished up off Hamlet instead of Macbeth… But what's twenty
light-years between friends?
Second Mate of Corgi: I told you all that the computer was on the blink, but nobody would listen to me.
As for this trip, we had to deviate.
First Mate of Corgi: Watch it, Peter!
Second Mate of Corgi: Why?
First Mate of Corgi: You know what the old man told us.
Second Mate of Corgi: Too bloody right I do. He's making his own report to the general manager, with
copies every which way. Top Secret. For your eyes only. Destroy by fire before reading. He's wasted in
the Dog Star Line. He should have been in the so-called Intelligence Branch of the clottish Survey
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Service.
First Mate of Pomeranian: What did happen?
First Mate of Corgi: Nothing much. Mannschenn Drive slightly on the blink, so we had to find a suitable
planet on which to park our arse while we recalibrated.
Second Mate of Corgi: And what a planet! You know how I like sleek women…
First Mate of Corgi: Watch it, you stupid bastard!
Second Mate of Corgi: Who're you calling a bastard? You can sling your rank around aboard the bloody
ship, but not here. If I'd had any sense I'd'a skinned out before the bitch lifted off. Morrowria'll do me
when 1 retire from the Dog Star Line! Or resign…
First Mate of Corgi: Or get fired-as you will be, unless you pipe down!
Second Mate of Corgi: You can't tell me…
First Mate of Corgi: I can, and I bloody well am telling you! Come on, finish your drink, and then back
to the ship!
At this juncture there are sounds of a scuffle as Corgi's chief officer, a very big man, hustles his junior
out of the Red Dragon.
Third Mate of Pomeranian: What the hell was all that about?
First Mate of Pomeranian: Search me.
The rest of the recorded conversation consists of idle and futile speculation by Pomeranian's officers as
to the identity of the world landed upon by Corgi.
To date I have been unable to identify this planet myself. There is no Morrowvia listed in the catalogue,
even when due allowance is made for variations in spelling. Also I have checked the Navy List, and
found that the master of Corgi is not, and never has been, an officer in the FSS Reserve. None of his
officers hold a Reserve commission. It may be assumed, therefore, that the master's report on the
discovery of what appears to be a Lost Colony will be made only to his owners.
Corgi, when she deviated, was bound from Darnstadt to Siluria. Her normal trajectory would have taken
her within three light-years of Gamma Argo. The planetary system of Gamma Argo was surveyed in the
early days of the Second Expansion, and no indigenous intelligent life was found on any of its worlds…
“Mphm…” Grimes refilled and relit his pipe. This was interesting reading.
He turned to the report from the agent at Port Brrooun. He, the shipping advisor to the Terran Consul,
had been spending most of his free evenings in an establishment called the Beer Hive. Brrooun had been
Corgi's next port of call after Llangowan. Her second officer had confined his troubles to a sympathetic
Shaara drone. At Port Mackay, on Rob Roy, he had gotten fighting drunk on the local whiskey and had
beaten up the chief officer and publicly abused the master. Normally such conduct would have led to his
instant dismissal—but Captain Danzellan, of Corgi, had been most reluctant to leave the objectionable
young man behind, in the hands of the civil authorities. The Intelligence Officer at Port Mackay,
although knowing nothing of the Lost Colony, had been intrigued by the failure of the master to rid
himself of an obvious malcontent and had wondered what was behind it. His own theories, for what they
were worth, included a Hanoverian plot against the Jacobean royal house of Waverley…
It was from Port Fortinbras, on Elsinore, that the next really interesting report came. The agent there was
a woman, and worked as a waitress in the Poor Yorick, a tavern famous for its funereal decor. The agent,
too, was famous insofar as the Intelligence Branch of the Survey Service was concerned, being known
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as the Bug Queen. Her specialty was recorders printed into the labels on bottles.
Transcript of conversation between Harald Larsen, owner-manager of Larsen's Repair Yard, and Peter
Dalquist, owner of Dalquist's Ship Chandlery:
Dalquist: An' how are things at the yard, Harald? Larsen: Can't complain, Pete, can't complain.
Southerly Buster's havin' a face lift.
Dalquist: Drongo Kane…
Larsen: You can say what you like about Drongo–but he always pays his bills…
Dalquist: Yeah. But he drives a hard bargain first.
Larsen: You can say that again.
Dalquist: An' what is it this time? General maintenance? Survey?
Larsen: Modifications. He's havin' his cargo spaces converted into passenger accommodation—of a
sort. An' you remember those two quick-firin' cannon I got off that derelict Waldeg-ren gunboat?
Drongo's havin' 'em mounted on the Buster.
Dalquist: But it ain't legal. Southerly Buster's a merchant ship.
Larsen: Drongo says that it is legal, an' that he's entitled to carry defensive armament… Some o' the
places he gets to, he needs it! But I checked up with me own legal eagles just to make sure that me own
jets are clear. They assured me that Drongo's within his rights.
Dalquist: But quick-firin' cannon, when every man-o'-war is armed to the teeth with laser, misguided
missiles an' only the Odd Gods of the Galaxy know what else! Doesn't make sense.
Larsen: Maybe it doesn't–but Drongo's got too much sense to take on a warship.
Dalquist: What if a warship takes on him?
Larsen: That's his worry.
Dalquist: But he must be thinkin' of fightin' somebody… Any idea who it might be?
Larsen: I haven't a clue. All that I know is that his last port, before he came here, was Brrooun, on one
o' the Shaara worlds. He told me–he'd had rather too much to drink himself–that he'd fed a couple of
bottles of Scotch to a talkative drone. He said that he'll buy drinks for anybody–or any thing–as long as
he gets information in return. Anyhow, this drone told Drongo what he'd been told by the drunken
second mate of a Dog Star tramp…
Dalquist: Which was?
Larsen: Drongo certainly wasn't telling me, even though he'd had a skinful. He did mutter something
about Lost Colonies, an' finders bein' keepers, an' about the Dog Star Line havin' to be manned by
greyhounds if they wanted to get their dirty paws into this manger…
Dalquist: An' was that all?
Larsen: You said it. He clammed up.
Unfortunately Captain Kane and his officers, unlike the majority of spacemen visiting Port Fortinbras,
do not frequent the Poor Yorick, preferring the King Claudius. On the several occasions that I have been
there as a customer, at the same times as Southerly Buster’s personnel, I have been unable to learn
anything of importance. Attempts made by myself to strike up an acquaintance with Captain Kane, his
mates and his engineers have failed.
Grimes chuckled. He wondered what the Bug Queen looked like. It seemed obvious that she owed her
success as an agent to her skill with electronic gadgetry rather than to her glamour. But Kane? Where
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did he come into the picture? The man was notorious—but, to date, had always managed to stay on the
right side of the law.
But it was time that he, Grimes, put his senior officers into the picture.
3
They were all in Grimes's day cabin—his departmental heads and his senior scientific officers. There
was Saul, the first lieutenant, a huge, gentle, very black man. There was Connery, chief engineer. The
two officers in charge of communications were there—Timmins, the electronicist, and Hayakawa, the
psionicist. There were Doctors Tallis, Westover and Lazenby—biologist, geologist and ethologist
respectively—all of whom held the rank of full commander. Forsby—physicist—had yet to gain his
doctorate and was only a lieutenant. There were Lieutenant Pitcher, navigator, Lieutenant Stein, ship's
surgeon and bio-chemist, and Captain Philby, officer in charge of Seeker's Marines.
Grimes, trying to look and to feel fatherly, surveyed his people. He was pleased to note that the real
spacemen—with the exception of Hayakawa— looked the part. Ethnic origins and differentiation of skin
pigmentation were canceled out, as it were, by the common uniform. With the exception of Maggie
Lazenby the scientists looked their part. They were, of course, all in uniform—though it wasn't what
they were wearing but how they were wearing it that mattered. To them uniform was just something to
cover their nakedness, the more comfortably the better. And to them beards were merely the means
whereby the bother of depilation could be avoided. The growths sprouting from the faces of Tallis, Wes-
tover andForsby contrasted shockingly with the neat hirsute adornments sported by Connery and Stein.
The only one of the scientists at whom it was a pleasure to look was Doctor Lazenby—slim, auburn-
haired and wearing a skirt considerably less than regulation length.
Grimes looked at her.
She snapped, “Get on with it, John.” (Everybody present knew that she was a privileged person.)
“Mphm,” he grunted as he carefully filled his pipe. “Help yourselves to coffee—or to something
stronger from the bar, if you'd rather.” He waited until everybody was holding a glass or a cup, then said,
“As you all know by this time, this is a Lost Colony expedition…”
Forsby raised his hand for attention. “Captain, forgive my ignorance, but I've only just joined the Survey
Service. And I'm a physicist, not a historian. Just what is a Lost Colony?”
“Mphm,” grunted Grimes again. He shot a dirty look at Maggie Lazenby as he heard her whispered
“Keep it short!” He carefully lit his pipe. He said, “The majority of the so-called Lost Colonies date
from the days of the Second Expansion, of the gaussjammers. The gaussjammers were interstellar ships
that used the Ehrenhaft Drive. Cutting a long and involved story short, the Ehrenhaft generators
produced a magnetic current—a current, not a field—and the ship in which they were mounted became,
in effect, a huge magnetic particle, proceeding at a speed which could be regulated from a mere crawl to
FTL along the ‘tramlines,’ the lines of magnetic force. This was all very well—but a severe magnetic
storm could throw a gaussjammer light-years off course, very often into an unexplored and uncharted
sector of the galaxy…”
“FTL?” demanded Forsby in a pained voice. “FTL?”
“A matter of semantics,” Grimes told him airily. “You know, and I know, that faster-than-light speeds
are impossible. With our Mannschenn Drive, for example, we cheat—by going astern in time as we're
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going ahead in space. The gaussjaminers cheated too—by coexisting with themselves all along the lines
of magnetic force that they were on. The main thing was—it worked. Anyhow, visualize a gaussjammer
after a magnetic storm has tangled the lines of force like so much spaghetti and drained the micro-pile of
all energy. The captain doesn't know where he is. But he has got power for his main engines.”
“You said that the micro-pile was dead.”
“Sure. But those ships ran to emergency generators—diesel generators. They churned out the electricity
to drive the Ehrenhaft generators. The ship's biochemist knew the techniques for producing diesel fuel
from whatever was available—even though it meant that all hands would be on short rations. So, for as
long as she could, the ship either tried to make her way back to some known sector or to find a planet
capable of being settled…”
“Analogous,” contributed Maggie Lazenby, “to the colonization of many Pacific islands by Polynesians
in Earth's remote past. But this colony that we're supposed to be looking for, John…”
“Yes. I was getting around to that. It's supposed to be in the Argo Sector. It was stumbled upon by a Dog
Star Line ship that made a deviation to recalibrate her Mannschenn Drive controls. It won't be a Lost
Colony for much longer.”
“Why not?” asked Forsby.
“To begin with, the Dog Star Line people know about it. The Shaara know about it. We know about it.
And Drongo Kane knows about it.”
“Drongo Kane?” This was Forsby again, of course. “Who's he?”
Grimes sighed. He supposed that his physicist knew his own subject, but he seemed to know very little
outside it. He turned his regard to his officers, said, “Tell him.”
“Drongo Kane…” murmured Saul in his deep, rich voice. “Smuggler, gunrunner…”
“Pirate…” contributed Timmins.
“That was never proven,” Grimes told him,
“Perhaps not, sir. But I was on watch—it was when I was a junior in Scorpio—when Bremerhaven's
distress call came through.”
“Mphm. As I recall it, Bremerhaven's own activities at the time were somewhat dubious…”
“Slaver…” said Saul.
“Somebody had to lake the people off Ganda before the radiation from their sun fried them. Whatever
ships were available had to be employed.”
“But Kane was paid by the Duke of Waldegren for the people he carried in Southerly Buster.”
“Just a fee,” said Grimes, “or commission, or whatever, for the delivery of indentured labor.”
“What about this bloody Lost Colony?” demanded Maggie Lazenby.
“We're supposed to find it.” Grimes gestured toward the folder on his desk with the stem of his pipe.
“I've had copies made of all the bumf that was given to me. It consists mainly of reports made by agents
on quite a few worlds. Our man at Port Llangowan, on Siluria, recorded a conversation between officers
of Corgi and Pomeranian in one of the local pubs. Corgi had found this world—which seems to be
called Morrowvia—quite by chance. Our man at Port Brrooun, on Drroomoorr, recorded a conversation
between the second mate of Corgi and a Shaara drone; once again Morrowvia was mentioned. The same
young gentleman—the second mate, not the drone—got into trouble at Port Mackay on Rob Roy.
Normally he'd have been emptied out there and then by Corgi's master—but keeping him on board must
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have been the lesser of two evils.”
“Why?” asked Forsby.
“Because,” Grimes told him patiently, “the master of Corgi didn't want word of a new world that could
well be included in the Dog Star Line's economic empire spread all over the galaxy. Where was I? Yes.
Our woman at Port Fortinbras, on Elsinore, recorded a conversation between the owner of a repair yard
and the owner of a ship chandlery. The repair yard was doing some work on Drongo Kane's ship,
Southerly Buster—the mounting of armament, among other things. Kane had told the owner of the yard
something—not much, but something—about a Lost Colony found by a Dog Star tramp…”
“And what are we supposed to do, Captain?” asked Forsby. “Plant the Federation's flag, or something?”
“Or something,” said Maggie Lazenby. “You can rest assured of that.”
Or something, thought Grimes.
4
As far as Grimes knew there was no real urgency—nonetheless he pushed Seeker along at her maximum
safe velocity. This entailed acceleration slightly in excess of 1.5 G, with a temporal precession rate that
did not quite, as Maggie Lazenby tartly put it, have all hands and the cook living backward. But Maggie
had been born and reared on Arcadia, a relatively low gravity planet and, furthermore, disliked and
distrusted the time-twisting Mannschenn Drive even more than the average spaceman or— woman.
However, Lieutenant Brian Connery was an extremely competent engineer and well able to maintain the
delicate balance between the ship's main drive units without remotely endangering either the vessel or
her personnel.
Even so, Grimes suffered. Seeker had a mixed crew—and a ship, as Grimes was fond of saying, is not a
Sunday School outing. On past voyages it had been tacitly assumed that Maggie was the captain's lady.
On this voyage it was so assumed too—by everybody except one of the two people most intimately
concerned. Grimes tried to play along with the assumption, but it was hopeless.
“I suppose,” he said bitterly, after she had strongly resisted a quite determined pass, “that you're still
hankering after that beefy lout, Brasidus or whatever his name was, on Sparta…”
“No,” she told him, not quite truthfully. “No. It's just that I can't possibly join in your fun and games
when I feel as though I weigh about fourteen times normal.”
“Only one and a half times,” he corrected her.
“It feels fourteen times. And it's the psychological effect that inhibits me.”
Grimes slumped back in his chair, extending an arm to his open liquor cabinet.
“Lay off it!” she told him sharply.
“So I can't drink now.”
“You will not drink now.” Her manner softened. “Don't forget, John, that you're responsible for the ship
and everybody aboard her…”
“Nothing can happen in deep space.”
“Can't it?” Her fine eyebrows lifted slightly. “Can't it? After some of the stories I've heard, and after
some of the stories you've told me yourself…”
“Mphm.” He reached out again, but it was a half-hearted attempt.
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“Things will work out, John,” she said earnestly. “They always do, one way or the other…”
“Suppose it's the wrong way?”
“You'll survive. I'll survive. We'll survive.” She quoted, half seriously, “ ‘Men have died, and worms
have eaten 'em—but not for love…’ ”
“Where's that from?” he asked, interested.
“Shakespeare. You trade school boys—you're quite impossible. You know nothing—nothing—outside
your own field.”
“I resent that,” said Grimes. “At the Academy we had to do a course in Twentieth Century fiction…”
Again the eyebrows lifted. “You surprise me.” And then she demanded incredulously, “What sort of
fiction?”
“It was rather specialized. Science fiction, as a matter of fact. Some of those old buggers made very
good guesses. Most of them, though, were way off the beam. Even so, it was fascinating.”
“And still trade-school-oriented.”
He shrugged. “Have it your way, Maggie. We're just Yahoos. But we do get our ships around.” He
paused, then delivered his own quotation. “ ‘Transportation is civilization.’ ”
“All right,” she said at last. “Who wrote that?”
“Kipling.”
“Kipling—and science fiction?”
“You should catch up on your own reading some time…” The telephone buzzed sharply. He got up and
went rapidly to the handset.
She remarked sweetly, “Nothing can happen in deep space…”
“Captain here,” said Grimes sharply.
Lieutenant Hayakawa's reedy voice drifted into the day cabin. “Hayakawa, Captain sir…”
“Yes, Mr. Hayakawa?”
“I… am not certain. But I think I have detected psionic radiation—not close, but not too far distant…”
“It is extremely unlikely,”Grimes said, “that we are the only ship in this sector of space.”
“I… I know, Captain. But—it is all vague, and the other telepath is maintaining a block… I… I tried at
first to push through, and he knew that I was trying… Then, suddenly, I relaxed…”
Psionic judo… thought Grimes.
“Yes… You could call it that… But there is somebody aboard that ship who is thinking all the time
about… Morrowvia…”
“Drongo Kane,” said Grimes.
“No, Captain. Not Drongo Kane. This is a… young mind. Immature…”
“Mphm. Anything else?”
“Yes… He is thinking, too, of somebody called Tabitha…”
“And who's she when she's up and dressed?”
“She is not dressed… not as he remembers her.”
“This,” stated Maggie Lazenby, “is disgusting. I thought, in my innocence, that the Rhine Institute took
a very dim view of any prying by its graduates into private thoughts. I was under the impression that
telepathy was to be used only for instantaneous communications over astronomical distances.”
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TheInheritorsTheInheritorsA.BertramChandlerTableofcontentsm1m2m3m4m5m6m7m8m9m10m11m12m13m14m15m16m17m18m19m20m21m22m23m24m25m26m27file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/A.%20Bertram%20Chandler%20-%20The%20Inheritors.html(1of73)16-2-200619:22:04TheInheritorsTo:FlagOfficerinChargeofLindisfarneBaseFrom:Drongo...

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