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4.0 out of 5 stars
Minor Works By the Grand Mistress, March 30, 2009
This review is from: The Game of Stars and Comets (Paperback)
The Game of Stars and Comets (2009) is an omnibus edition of four short SF novels, including
The X Factor,
Voorloper,
The Eye of the Monster, and
The Sioux Spaceman. These novels are set in similar universes, but at different times and locales.
Each is a standalone novel. Although The Sioux Spaceman is the last story in the book, it is actually the earliest story by the internal chronology. The other stories could have occurred at any time during the centuries of human expansion through the galaxy.
The X-Factor (1965) is probably set within the Council/Confederation sequence. The Survey Service allowed their space personnel leave to marry and to produce children. After several years, the marriage was break-bonded and the couple went their own ways. Any children from the marriage were raised in a Service creche.
In this novel, Diskan Fentress was raised in the Service creche on Nyborg. Unlike his fellows, Diskan was oversized and clumsy. Under direct or hostile supervision, he was even more clumsy. His superiors deemed him suitable only for the most degrading forms of manual labor.
Then Renfry Fentress returns from presumed death to find his son. His ship had been holed by a meteor and left drifting. Another scout from an unknown spacefaring species had rescued Renfry and took him back to Vaanchard. There he had married a Vaan woman and became stepfather of her two children, Rika and Drustans.
Since they could not have children of their own, Renfry searched for his children from previous service marriages and found Diskan. Before his long absence, Renfry had earned an impressive reputation as a First-In Scout. Obviously Diskan was not going to follow in his father's footsteps, so Renfry took him to a new home on Vaanchard.
The Vaans are a refined and sensitive culture. They do not issue rude remarks as had some of his crechemates. But they do consider him crude and inept. Diskan just doesn't fit in here anymore than he did at the creche.
One day Diskan finds himself in his father's study and decides to flee the planet. He takes a trip tape from a rack and heads for the spaceport. There he steals a smaller ship, inserts the tape, and goes into stasis for the remainder of the trip. However, the ship awakens him for an emergency landing.
Voorloper (1980) is set in the Forerunner sequence. It takes place on Voor, an agricultural world with a history of mysterious deaths. After fifty years of settlement, a hamlet in the north was wiped out by something since called Shadows. A couple of years later, another town was attacked. Then people in other villages disappeared until all northern hamlets were abandoned and everyone moved south.
Only a very few survived the malicious incursions. In one town, only a five year old boy remained alive, but without any memories of his past. In another town, a four year old girl, two infants and a brain damaged women survived the mysterious attack. No other survivors were ever found.
The Tangle covers a large area of Voor's northern plain. It consists of intertwined vegetation with large thorns and deadly properties. It acts as a natural distort, blanking radio and even vision. Aircraft that fly too low above it are brought down into the greenery and seldom recovered. Even blasters are useless against the vegetation.
In this novel, Bart s'Lorn was the only survivor of Mungo Town. His father -- Mac Turley s'Ban -- was away from the hamlet at the time of the attack, but his mother was among the victims. Bart has been traveling as a voorloper every since his father came and recovered him. His earliest memory is of riding a gar with his father striding beside him.
Illo is a survivor of the Shadow attack on Voor's Grove. She is even younger than Bart, but is a trained healer. She asks Bart's father for passage to the north and is given permission to accompany them.
Mac s'Ban has been scouting the stricken towns in the north for many years. In the first two or three excursions, he wore a Survey exosuit to protect himself from any noxious substances or lifeforms. Later, he rummaged through the ruins in his normal clothes. Yet he never let Bart go with him into the deserted towns.
Then a great storm strikes while they are far into the grassy plains. They free the gars and barricade themselves within the wagon. But the storm pushes the wagon across the plains and finally down into a gully.
Eye of the Monster (1962) is set in the Solar Queen sequence, but further in the future. The Council of the South Sector Empire has decided to let the natives govern their own planet and have withdrawn their military forces. The offworlders have been warned that they will be on their own after the Patrol leaves.
In this novel, Rees Naper is an orphan whose closest relative is his uncle, Milo Naper. Rees was a Survey brat and had been attending the Survey Academy when his father failed to return from a mission. Since his mother had already passed, Milo took Rees out of the Academy and brought him to Ishkur.
Dr. Milo Naper is a missionary to the Ishkurians. He has very different opinions about the Ishkurians than his nephew. In fact, they disagree about almost everything, particularly about the use of military force. Despite their disagreements, Milo has custody of Rees and refuses to let him return to the Academy.
Gordy Beltz is the young son of two missionaries. He has known no other home than the Ishkurian jungles. Sometimes he tags along with Rees on normal tasks around the mission.
Zannah is a Salarika cubling and is probably younger than Gordy. Rees finds her in a pit trap and rescues her. But the trap was poisoned with ka thorns and he goes to the mission office to get the only known antidote.
Isiga is second-companion to Lord Sakfor. She has been living at the Salarikan trade compound, but comes looking for Zannah. Her meeting with Rees at the mission is more than a little painful.
Then the Ishkurians -- Crocs -- start killing off all the offworlders within reach. They hit the mission first and then the Salarikan compound. Rees and Gordy now have no living kin on the planet and Isiga and Zannah are the only surviving Salarikans.
Rees has some small knowledge -- practically none -- in xenopsychology. His father's notes suggest that he try to "think like a spider". He knows a little about the reptilian natives, but nobody really knows how they think. Nonetheless, he uses what little he knows to anticipate the moves of the Crocs.
The Sioux Spaceman (1960) is set at a time when the Terran League first reached the stars. They found the Styor Empire occupying the most desirable planets. The Empire was old and beginning to crack, but was still capable of defeating an upstart newcomer. The League dealt with the Empire mostly through the Outworld Trade Service.
In this novel, Kade Whitehawk is a Lakota Sioux in the Outworld Trade Service. On his first post, Kade had taught a Styor lordling a painful lesson. Now he has been pulled off that assignment and shipped back to Lodi for disciplinary action. Yet he is being placed in an emergency reassignment to a Mixed Team on Klor. Kade is confused, for Mixed Team positions are supposed to be rewards, not punishment details.
Enroute to Klor, Kade learns as much as he can about his new assignment. He learns that Klor has three continents, two in the western hemisphere and the third in the east. This eastern continent is hook-shaped and stretches across the equator. A chain of mountains and foothills runs diagonally across this continent, but most of the land consists of grassy plains.
This third continent is the most important to the Trade Service. The Terran Trading Post is located in a level space among the mountains, equidistant from the Styor administrative center, Cor, and a giant smelter-producer complex. The rest of the continent is covered by the individual holdings of the lords.
The Trading Post is mostly interested in the furs of giant bat-like creatures. These flyers are trapped by teams of the native Ikkinni hired from various lords. These Ikkinni are slaves captured from the wild natives lurking among the peaks.
The Ikkinni are tall, but very slender, and are covered with fine, long black hair. Their wide mouths contain the sharp teeth of a carnivore. Around their necks are the collars that enslave them.
Strangely enough, his predecessor, Jon Steel, was also a Lakota. According to his briefing, Steel had been "lost by an act of violence", which meant neither death by the Styor nor death by accident. Kade is very interested in discovering exactly how Steel had died.
On Klor, Kade busies himself catching up with more current records and correspondence. He finds an interesting analysis of the native grass, comparing it with the grama grass of his native plains. He also finds himself in charge of a Terran bear destined as a gift to High-Lord Pac.
Kade becomes interested in Dokital, one of the native slaves permanently assigned to the Trading Post. The slaves on the post are owned by a Styor lord, but are overseen by a half-breed Overman named Buk. None of the slaves will have anything to do with the bear, but Kade tries to get Dokital used to the animal.
Kade presents the bear to High-Lord Pac and entices him with visions of riding horses...
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