Battlefield Earth

Jo

Five assistants presented a huge plan instantly.

This building, they said, had been the palace of the Grand Duke of Luxembourg in ancient times. And even though Jo

The indigenous architecture, from the castles that lay about, probably had been Gothic and neo-Gothic. And this palace should be like this. Jo

Chrissie and he had camped out in the woods, happy to be away from the din, cheerful in a buckskin tent and eating good food cooked on an open fire.

The Chatovarians had cleared the site and erected an armor steel shell. They had then flown down to a couple of marble quarries north of Leghorn in Italy and operated a ferry of ore freighters until they had piles of green and rose and other colored slabs. They had spliced them together into an exterior and interior of polished, armored rock. They had underplated the stream so that it did what it was supposed to do. But they had also installed full plumbing. The fireplaces would burn wood but since this was a waste of good food they also put solar driven infraheaters in them and a simulated flame.

It was a palace all right. And it might be Gothic. But it sure was colorful! Chrissie had been enthralled with it.

Jo

The bank had already moved back to Zurich and Jo

Jo

Dries rambled all over in his yacht– an oddity to use a space craft to go to the corner store for a bottle of schnapps, but that was Dries. He had taken the job on the condition that he would have long weekends and he seemed to always be going to northern Scotland. He said he was starting a “peppermint industry” on the side, but Jo

On the other hand, he might have been settling some accounts with Mr. Tsung. Dries kept certain customers and Mr. Tsung was one of them. Jo

Jo

He couldn't get through the courtyard. Lin Li, Mr. Tsung's son-in-law, had all the banquet hall furniture out and was working it over with molecular metal spray. The young man had an audience of a couple of awed Chatovarians. He could “paint” pictures, freehand, with a metal spray gun and a piece of card board to catch the splatters. He was very quick. Right now he was doing a scene Jo

He had stopped doing dragon medallions by hand. As they were all the same, a couple of Chatovarian mechanics, awed by his ability, had gotten him to do a perfect one and then had made a machine to turn them out at about ten thousand an hour. The demand out in the universe was such that they were back-ordered even so.

Jo

The vague feeling of disappointment hit him again. He had been certain, when he rose, that this was a sort of special day. That something wonderful was going to happen. It hadn't.

Lin Li had just started on a ferocious figure of a charging knight. He was using a scarlet metal, putting blood on a blade. It made Jo

Lin Li was guiding the molecular spray, now gray, to make the armor. The Chatovarians were looking on with awe. One of them was holding a spare gun, ready to hand it to Lin Li. They weren't assistants. They just wished they could do things like that. The Chatovarian closed the trigger of the gun to test it.

Suddenly Jo

He sped back out the arch and raced all around the palace side and jumped the creek and popped into the back door.

Chrissie, hair tied back, was filling a big bowl, held by Mr. Tsung, from a pot on the fire.

“Chrissie!” said Jo

Pattie was sitting over in the corner. Pattie never said anything these days. She just looked down. Ti

“Ti

"Pattie doesn't feel well,” said Chrissie.

“Bring her along!” said Jo

“Is it a diplomatic conference or a scientific one?” said Mr. Tsung, monotone through the vocoder.

“Medical!” said Jo

Mr. Tsung put down the bowl and raced off to put a white coat and a pair of spectacles– which had no glass in them– in a sack. That was proper dress he had seen in ancient pictures.

"Jo

“We'll eat it on the plane! We're headed for Africa!”