Flora was a great green oval two hundred kilometers long and about a hundred wide.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” Alexander said as they sped over the low range of hills and the single gaunt volcano filling the eastward end of the island and swept over a broad green valley dotted with fields and orchards interspersed at intervals by red-roofed structures whose purpose was obvious.
“Our farms,” Alexander said redundantly. The airboat crossed a fair-sized river. “That’s the Styx,” Alexander said. “Grandfather named it. He was a classicist in his way—spent a lot of his time reading books most people never heard of. Things like the Iliad and Gone with the Wind. The mountains he called the Apennines, and that volcano’s Mount Olympus. The marshland to the north is called the Pontine Marshes—our main road is the Camino Real.” Alexander grinned. “There’s a lot of Earth on Flora. You’ll find it in every name. Grandfather was an Earthman and he used to get nostalgic for the homeworld. Well—there’s Alexandria coming up. We’ve just about reached the end of the line.”
Kennon stared down at the huge gray-green citadel resting on a small hill in the center of an open plain. It was a Class II Fortalice built on the efficient star-shaped plan of half a millennium ago—an ugly spiky pile of durilium, squat and massive with defensive shields and weapons which could still withstand hours of assault by the most modern forces.
“Why did he build a thing like that?” Kennon asked.
“Alexandria?—well, we had trouble with the natives when we first came, and Grandfather had a synthesizer and tapes for a Fortalice in his ship. So he built it. It serves the dual purpose of base and house. It’s mostly house now, but it’s still capable of being defended.”
“And those outbuildings?”
“They’re part of your job.”
The airboat braked sharply and settled with a smooth, sickeningly swift rush that left Kennon gasping—feeling that his stomach was still floating above him in the middle level. He never had become accustomed to an arbutus landing characteristics. Spacers were slower and steadier. The ship landed gently on a pitted
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