Lair of the Cyclops by Allen Wold

Author:Allen Wold [Wold, Allen]
Format: epub
Published: 2009-11-06T09:00:00+00:00

Tsikashka

1

Many worlds produce life, and some of these living worlds produce intelligent life. A few intelligent species develop a technology, and in potential at least could become starfaring. It has happened many times.

The scope of space is such that in the Federation, by no means the largest of star nations, there are dozens of these starfaring species, though Humans are the most numerous by far. And in the scope of time, from the first sentient Taarshome—whose origins are so far back toward the beginning of the cosmos that their age can hardly be counted— until today, there have been many more starfaring nations than presently exist. It is a truism that more species of life are extinct than survive. Time is so long and space so large.

Tsikashka was a world on which a sparse life had evolved, but it produced no forms above the relative level of arthropod, though some of those species might seem quite advanced by comparison with similar forms on other worlds. And yet Tsikashka had been home, from time to time, of several starfaring species of people, though none of who existed in the Federation today. Indeed, none of them had survived more than a few thousands of years after learning how to travel between the stars. In some cases, the home worlds of these species were known. In more cases the long dead colonies on Tsikashka were the only remaining examples.

If Rikard's surmise was correct, there was at least one other interstellar people to add to the record, though as yet without name—the cyclopeans first hinted at in the Ahmear archaeology text.

Rikard and his companions arrived at the Tsikashka system on a small, privately chartered flickership. It was Rikard's preferred mode of transportation, and since there was no regular starship service to Tsikashka anyway, that was just as well. He did take the precaution of not divulging his destination until they were under way, just in case Karyl Toerson had access to the company's records.

All travel to and from the Tsikashka system was by demand only, on the part of universities, research academies, planetary governments, Federal conservation services, and so on. And so the bare-bones jumpslot station was used to dealing with flickerships of all types. They were not used to dealing with private individuals. For this reason, Rikard had more difficulty than he had anticipated in getting permission just to dock at the tiny station, with a staff of under six thousand, and most of them clerical.

Rikard knew how to deal with the red tape, however, and had his credentials, but his reputation had preceded him. The whole system was run more like a university than a civilian government, and those in charge were not that happy having someone who, on the one hand, had made four or five major and a dozen or so minor

archaeological discoveries that were changing the development of the history of the Federation, on the other hand was known to frequently keep good archaeological examples for himself, to disfavor monopolistic

development and research, and to occasionally leave a swath of destruction behind him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.