The Children's Hour by Jerry Pournelle & S.M. Stirling

Author:Jerry Pournelle & S.M. Stirling [Pournelle, Jerry & Stirling, S.M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: S.F.
Published: 2018-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

"Huh. Hun-huh.” Lights spun before Jonah’s eyes, wrenching his stomach with more nausea. Gummy saliva blocked his mouth as he tumbled over the lip of the gully, crashing through brush that ripped and tore with living fingers of thorn and bramble. Tumble, roll, down through the brush-covered sixty-degree slope, out into the patch of gravel and sparse spaghetti-like grass analog at the bottom. To lie and rest, Murphy, to rest . . .

Memories were returning. Evidently his subconscious believed there wouldn’t be another interrogation. Believed they were dead already. My fingernail. I have to escape. And there’s a laugh . . . but I have to try.

He turned the final roll into a flip and came erect, facing in the direction of his flight; forced his diaphragm to breathe, stomach out to suck air into the bottom of the lungs. His chest felt tight and hot, as if the air pumping through it was nothing, vacuum, inert gas. Will kept him steady, blinked his eyes into focus. He was in a patch of bright sunlight, the forest above deep green-gold shade that flickered; the soil under his feet was damp, impossibly cool on his skin. The wind was blowing toward him, which meant that the kzin would be following ground-scent rather than what floated on the breeze. Kzin noses were not nearly as sensitive as a hound’s, but several thousand times more acute than a human’s.

And I must stink to high heaven, he thought. Even then he could smell himself; he hawked and spat, taking a firmer grip on his improvised weapon. That was a length of branch and a rock half the size of his head, dangling from the end by thin strong vines; thank Murphy that Wunderland flora ran to creepers .. .

“One,” he muttered to himself. “There ain’t no justice, I know, but please, just let me get one.” His breathing was slowing, and he became conscious of thirst, then the gnawing emptiness under his ribs. The sun was high overhead; nearly a day already? How many of the others were still alive?

A flicker of movement at the lip of the ravine, ten meters above him and twenty away. Jonah swung the stone-age momingstar around his head and roared. And the kzin halted its headlong four-footed rush, rose like an unfolding wall of brown-red dappled in the light at the edge of the tall trees, and slashed across with the white of teeth. Great round eyes, and he could imagine the pupils going pinpoint; the kzin homeworld was not only colder than Wunderland, it was dimmer. Batwing ears unfolding, straining for sound. He would have to stop that, their hearing was keen enough to pick a human heartbeat out of the background noise. This was a young male, he would be hot, hot for the kill and salt blood to quench his thirst and let him rest . . .

“Come on, you kshat, you sthondat-eater,” Jonah yelled in the snarling tones of the Hero’s Tongue. “Come and

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.