Battlefield Earth

He was flanked by a Coordinator who knew Chinese and a monk who also knew Sherpa. Jo

After some pleasant responses to their speeches, Jo

Oh, they surely agreed with that!

Jo

One could have heard a snowflake fall, it was so still. He thought they hadn't understood him. He opened his mouth to repeat. And this orderly throng became totally disorderly. Forgotten were ma

Only one eager question was being roared at him now in at least three tongues. “How? How can we help?”

These beaten people, these ragged, starved remnants of once-great nations had not really dreamed they could be of value. That they could assist. That they might have a role to play besides to hide and starve. It was a mind-shattering thought. To help.

The Coordinators and chiefs somehow got them back in their places around the fire but they couldn't sit down. They were too excited.

When Jo

Jo

Jo

He told them what a communicator was. If people gave them a message in Psychlo, they could put it on the radio in Pali and the Buddhist at the other end could put it back into Psychlo. And the enemies upstairs would never understand. They thought it was

marvelous. A whole worldwide Pali-speaking network. Yes, yes, yes!

But now there was a sobering thought. At some time one of them might be captured and made to give messages. And if so they would give the message in Tibetan, and that was their secret. It was dangerous.

All life was dangerous. They accepted, every man, woman, and child of them and accepted for the ones at home too! Jo

The next were the Sherpas. There was a lot of hunting to be done; there were even occasional peaks to climb elsewhere. There were huge plains in Russia, teeming with sheep and cattle.

There was an awful lot of meat drying and preserving to be done. Could they, all of them, go to Russia and help stock that base with food? Food? They themselves were starving. Yes, indeed, they would hunt and stock the base with food.

Then Chief Chong-won brought in his people. Secrecy was a breath of life to them. Jo

Jo

Hot? A place that was hot? How marvelous! How absolutely marvelous! Who cared how hot?

Jo

Now all this was very secret, said

Jo

They had eight trainees over in America right now learning about machines! Why were they delaying here talking? Where was this place?

Jo

Chief Chong-won asked the people whether they agreed. And they thought he was just delaying things. Of course they agreed!

Jo

En route to pass the night in his plane, just in case, he stopped by the ore carrier where the Tolnep lay. He had an impulse to call Half-Captain Rogodeter Snowl and chew on him. But he didn't. Let the half-captain stew. That was a future battle.

Chapter 5

In Scotland, Jo

Finally Robert the Fox, who had come up for the meeting from Africa, told him the Chiefs were getting restless so Jo

The house Chrissie had found was just by Castle Rock and it was only a short walk. They didn't talk en route, eyeing the overcast sky above them.

Two gillies armed with lochaber axes and blast rifles let them into the entrance of an underground passage. The Chiefs had found the remains of powder magazines and air-raid shelters from some ancient wars and had suspended reconstruction of their parliament house and had refurbished the deep caverns instead. Mine lights burned in niches and cast the shadows of clan ba

The Chiefs were all there. They had been there for hours. But they gathered around and shook Jo

Robert the Fox played them some discs of the radio telescope intercepts.

Aside from other items in them, the Chiefs were amazed at the dissimilarity of faces in the combined force. They were also very interested in a game these creatures were playing by viewscreen: one of Robert's prisoners had identified it as "klepp." Each player had a board of six sides and six different sets of pieces, and when one of them made a move, the other players would make the same move on their boards. The pieces were little spaceships and tanks and marines and soldiers, and they had different movements and were held down magnetically to a board of six-hundred-sixteen hexagons. It wasn't the game that interested the Chiefs but the fact that the a