Missing Link
Book Excerpt
"O.K.," said Stetson. "You come in loud and clear."
"I ought to. I'm right on top of you!"
"There'll be a relay ship over you all the time," said Stetson. "Now ... when you're not touching that mike contact this rig'll still feed us what you say ... and everything that goes on around you, too. We'll monitor everything. Got that?"
"Yes."
Stetson held out his right hand. "Good luck. I meant that about diving in for you. Just say the word."
"I know the word, too," said Orne. "HELP!"
* * * * *
Gray mud floor and gloomy aisles between monstrous bluish tree trunks--that was the jungle. Only the barest weak glimmering of sunlight penetrated to the mud. The disguised sled--its para-grav units turned off--lurched and skidded around buttress roots. Its headlights swung in wild arcs across the trunks and down to the mud. Aerial creepers--great looping vines of them--swung down from the towering forest ceiling. A steady drip of condensation spattered
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Readers reviews
A team of explorers must decide whether to wipe out an alien race, or invite them to join the galactic empire. The politics of this are not well explained. In the end, a junior officer improbably decides the outcome.
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A good little adventure story; whether the explorer would actually be able to make the leap of intuition at the end may be debatable, but it's a tense, interesting story.