Battlefield Earth

“He already bought them,” said

MacAdam. “Down to the last bauble in their boots!”

All but Jo

The thought of Chrissie hit him. He had been keeping it suppressed so he could keep on going.

MacAdam and the baron collected up their things again and walked out shaking their heads and muttering, “Brown Limper!" And, “Made trouble clear to the end!”

A wailing, petulant voice cut into the room and Sir Robert looked up. Stormalong was behind two Russians at the room entrance who were stolidly blocking him out of it. “Sir Robert! Please come out here! I’ve had a dispatch that's been waiting for you for hours and hours and hours!”

Sir Robert pushed past the Russian guards and vanished.

Jo

He collided with Sir Robert. The old Scot was standing there, a written message in his hand. He was crying and laughing all at the same time.

Sir Robert pushed the dispatch into Jo

Edinburgh! They had gotten through the last tu

Jo

There was someone across the bowl, someone covered with dust but wearing the domed helmet they used in high-speed flying. It was Thor!

Thor was beckoning to him gladly. Thor shouted, “Look who we got here for you, Jo

Somebody was rushing toward him. She threw her arms about him, crying his name.

It was Chrissie! Gaunt and pale, her black eyes flooding with tears.

“Oh, Jo

Jo

Part XXXI

Chapter 1

Jo

It was a lovely summer day: the sunlight spattered down through the leafy trees along the trail, making patterns of green and gold that shifted gently and seemed to slowly echo the soft music of the purling stream.

Windsplitter snorted and tried to rear. It was the bear. The same bear they had seen there several times during the three months they had been in Luxembourg, using this same trail from the old minesite to Jo

It's just the bear, you old fraud,” said Jo

Windsplitter sort of laughed and settled down. He did what he could to make life more exciting. And ever since the horses had been flown down from Russia they had been getting fat from idleness. Jo

Jo

And would have still been ru

For all this beautiful day, Jo

He reviewed what had happened so far to see if any bright event had been missed by him.

He had gone, pretty much as usual, down to the old minesite to find the routine bedlam in progress. Three months ago he had bought the old Grand Duchy of Luxembourg from the Intergalactic holdings. The Psychlos had had an iron mine there which they had worked in a lackadaisical fashion. They had also built a small steel mill and a forge which they used to turn out hooks, ore buckets and such for their mines on Earth.

The invaders had not touched the place, already well defended, and the deep underground levels had been ideal for doing the final setup of consoles. Angus MacTavish and Tom Smiley Townsen worked there, behind vault doors. They had streamlined assembly so all they had to do was implant the pattern of the circuit on the insulating board, assemble the console, and shove it into a shipping case. Everything else was preconstructed practically out in the open since it gave away nothing.

In fact nobody but Jo

A heavily guarded convoy of trucks then drove them an incredible distance down to an ancient tu

A brand-new set of trucks, much more heavily guarded, then rushed them to the new firing platform that was now located in a mountain bowl outside Zurich. There, they were routed and shipped.

As Jo

They were batting out about two hundred consoles a day. The preassembly people were making the whole platform and poles and wiring since none of that was secret, and they were being shipped right along with the consoles.

No, mused Jo

The bear had gotten his first trout. He batted it way up on the bank, looked around, and then went back to fishing. Windsplitter had found some young grass and was noisily pulling it up and eating it.

There had been nothing new with the Chatovarians. The bank had informed Sir Robert the moment all arms and related firms had crashed but good in the Chatovarian Empire and Sir Robert and Angus and half a dozen Selachees had sped there.

The Chatovarians had the reputation of being the best defense builders. It was their boast that no Psychlo attack had ever broken through in the entire seven-hundred-planet empire. They had even shot down gas drones. So, for that and other reasons, the new teleportation company– now called “The Rig industry” after Jo