At The Edge Of Space (Hanan Rebellion)

Table of Contents

 

 

 

“This is top-flight adventure, with plenty of action and very good plotting. But it’s a great deal more. It’s a novel of the evils and virtues of power, of spirituality and purpose, of prejudice and of love in many forms.... The writing is clear and direct, but it never lacks feeling. The characters are shown simply and they develop into people we know and respond to deeply. This is an admirable display of good writing without any unnecessary pyrotechnics to exaggerate it. If I seem to be raving a bit, I am. I read few books that please me totally as much as this one.”

—Lester Del Rey,
Analog

“An uncommonly convincing and moving novel.”

 

 

“Cherryh provides a riveting plot that emphasizes intense human/alien interactions instead of physical violence. Perhaps undervalued because she writes in traditional forms that don’t appeal to the literati, while too difficult for some fans of space opera, Cherryh remains one of the most talented writers in the field.”—
Publishers Weekly

“One of SF’s most powerful imaginations.”
—Booklist

“A seriously probing, thoughtful, intelligent piece of work, with more insight in half a dozen pages than most authors manage in half a hundred.”
—Kirkus

“Cherryh is a born storyteller.”

DAW Titles by
C.J. CHERRYH

THE FOREIGNER UNIVERSE

FOREIGNER
INVADER
INHERITOR

PRECURSOR
DEFENDER
EXPLORER

THE ALLIANCE-UNION UNIVERSE
DOWNBELOW STATION
MERCHANTER’S LUCK
FORTY THOUSAND IN GEHENNA
SERPENT’S REACH
BROTHERS OF EARTH
HUNTER OF WORLDS
THE FADED SUN Omnibus:
Kesrith
|
Shon’jir
|
Kutath

The Chanur Novels
THE CHANUR SAGA Omnibus:
The Pride Of Chanur
|
Chanur’s Venture
|
The Kif Strike Back
CHANUR’S HOMECOMING
CHANUR’S LEGACY

THE MORGAINE CYCLE
THE MORGAINE SAGA Omnibus:
Gate of Ivrel
|
Well of Shiuan
|
Fires of Azeroth
EXILE’S GATE

OTHER WORKS:
THE DREAMING TREE Omnibus:
The Tree of Swords and Jewels
|
The Dreamstone
ALTERNATE REALITIES Omnibus:
Port Eternity
|
Wave Without a Shore
|
Voyager in Night

ANGEL WITH THE SWORD
CUCKOO’S EGG

VISIBLE LIGHT
SUNFALL

BROTHERS OF EARTH

Copyright © 1976 by C.J. Cherryh

 

HUNTER OF WORLDS
Copyright © 1977 by C.J. Cherryh

 

AT THE EDGE OF SPACE
Copyright © 2003 by C.J. Cherryh

 

All Rights Reserved.

 

 

DAW Book Collectors No. 1269.
DAW Books are distributed by the Penguin Group (USA).

 

 

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

 

 

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Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or
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First Printing, September 2003

DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED
U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES
—MARCA REGISTRADA.
HECHO EN U.S.A.
S.A.

eISBN : 978-1-101-49560-5

The Hanan Rebellion

Someday far, far in the future, in the 4000s, a segment of humanity fairly well splits itself off from the rest of human space and takes armed exception to intervention in their territories.

Out of this era come two stories set on the very fringes of human exploration, in Hanan space. Don’t worry that in one of them humanity seems to be on the decline . . . we’re widespread by then, and this is a local issue. Science fiction is a literature of optimism, and we’re a hardy breed . . . as witness the people caught up in these two tales.

Brothers of Earth
was, right along with
Gate of Ivrel
(see:
The Morgaine Saga
), my first novel.
Hunter of Worlds
was right along with these two, very early. Some have asked me where the influence for the culture might lie—and I’ll surprise no few critics who think they know by saying really it’s closer to Roman than anything you’ll see on television.

Hunter of Worlds
involves perception and language and what’s truly alien—which might look just like us, being real competitors and instinctually different. The language freights the mental differences. If you don’t catch a word at first, look at the situation in which it’s used. You may find yourself thinking in a predatory way.

—C.J. Cherryh, Spokane, 2003

BROTHERS OF EARTH

1

Endymion
died soundlessly, a man-made star that glowed and quickly winked out of existence.

Kurt Morgan watched her until there was no more left to see, eyes fixed to the aft scanners of the capsule. When it was over, he cut to forward view and set his mind on survival.

There had been eighty men and women on
Endymion,
seventy-nine of them now reduced to dust and vapor, one with the ship and indistinguishable from its remains. Two minutes to sunward was another cloud that had been the enemy, another hundred individuals, the elements that had been life from a score of worlds borne still on collision course, destroyer and destroyed.

No report of the encounter would go back to Central. There was no means to carry it. The Hanan planet of origin, Aeolus, was no more than a cinder now, light-years distant; and
Endymion
in pursuing the Hanan enemy had given no reference data to Command. They had jumped on their own, encountered, won and perished at once; the survival capsule had no starflight capability.

A nameless star and six uncharted worlds lay under the capsule’s scan. The second was the most likely to support life.

It grew larger in his scanners over the course of seven days, a blue world wreathed in swirling cloud and patched with the brown of land. It had a large, solitary moon. In all particulars it read as an Earth-class planet, one the Alliance would have sacrificed a hundred ships to win—which they had already won if they could have known it.

The feared Hanan retaliation did not materialize. There were no ships to threaten him. The world filled the scanners now. Kurt vacillated between euphoric hope and hopeless fear—hope because he had planned to die and it looked as if he might not; and fear, because it suddenly dawned on him that he was truly alone. The idea of a possible enemy had kept him company until now. But
Endymion
had run off the edge of the charts before she perished. If the Hanan were not here, then there were no other human beings this far from Sol Center.

That was loneliness.

Absolute.

 

The wedge-shaped capsule came in hard, overheated and struggling for life, plates shrieking as they parted their joinings. Pressure exploded against Kurt’s senses, gray and red and dark.

He hung sideways, the straps preventing him from slipping into the storage bay. He spent some little time working free, feverish with anxiety. When he had done so he opened the hatch, reckless of tests: he had no other options.

Breathable. For a time after he had exited the ship he simply stood and looked about him, from horizon to horizon of rolling wooded hills. Never in all his planetfalls had he seen the like of it, pure and unspoiled and but for the stench of burning, scented with abundant life.

He stood there laughing into the sun with the tears running down his face, and shut his eyes and let the clean wind dry his face and the coolness of the air relieve the stifling warmth that clung to him.

 

The land began to descend perceptibly after the forests: a long hill, a rocky bow of land, a brief expanse of beach on an unlimited expanse of sea. The sun was low in the sky before he had found a way down from the high rocks to that sandy shore.

And there he dropped his gear on the dry sand and gazed out entranced, over a sea bluer than he had ever seen, and greener than the hills, colors divided according to the depth. Isles lay against the horizon. The sand was white and littered with the refuse of the sea, bits of wood and weed, and shells of delicate pinks and yellows, in spiked and volute shapes.

Delighted as a child, he bent and dipped his hands into the water that lapped at his boots, tasted the salt of it and spat a little, for he had known what a sea ought to be, but he had never touched one or smelled the salt wind and the wrack on the beach. He picked up a stick of driftwood and hurled it far out, watched it carried back to him. Something within him settled into place, finding all the home-tales of his star-wandering folk true and real, even if it was in such a place as this, that man had never touched.

He waded at the edge a while, barefoot, careful of stepping on something poisonous, and used a stick to prod at things that lived there. But the daylight began to fade, so he could no longer see things clearly, and the wind became cold; then he began to reckon with the coming night, and gathered a great supply of driftwood and made a fire.