Equator - Softcover

Aldiss, Brian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0450015017 ISBN 13: 9780450015014

Publisher: New English Library Ltd, 1973

Synopsis

SCIENCE FICTION-AN INVASION OF EARTH WAS IMMINENT-AND ONLY ONE MAN COULD PREVENT IT!A TEAM OF SABOTEURS HAD INFILTRATED THE ENEMY TERRITORIES,ATTEMPTING TO BRING BACK TO EARTH A WARNING OF THE IMPENDING ATTACK.DEATH HAD REDUCED THEIR NUMBER TO TWO AND FEARS OF TREACHERY HAD DIVIDED THEM.FINALLY,ONLY ONE MAN COULD SAVE EARTH.THE SECRET OF THE HORDES OF DEATH MUST BE BROUGHT BACK.BUT HE COULD TRUST NOBODY NOT EVEN HIMSELF.

About this title

Synopsis

(Published in the USA as 'Vanguard') A fearless spy team from Earth falls into hostile hands when they secretly land in Luna Area 101 - Rosk territory. Tyne and Murray escape with their lives, but the third man is dead and when Tyne suspects that Murray is the guilty party he prepares to confront him, only to discover that he has disappeared in a banned area. His search for Murray leads him to a horrendous discovery - the Rosks are threatening imminent invasion of Earth-and now only Tyne can prevent it.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Evening shadows came across the spaceport in long strides. It was the one time of day when you could almost feel the world rotating. In the rays of the sinking sun, dusty palms round the spaceport looked like so many varnished cardboard props. By day, these palms seemed metal; be evening, so much papier mache. In the tropics, nothing was itself, merely fabric stretched over heat, poses over pulses.

The palms bowed stiffly as Scout Ship AX25 blasted up into the sky, peppering them with another spray of dust.

The three occupants of the ship were rocked back on their acceleration couches for only a few seconds. Then Allan Cunliffe got up, strolled casually over to the port and gazed out. Nobody would guess from his composed face that the ship had just embarked on a hazardous mission.

‘At once you begin to love,’ he said, looking down at the world with a kind of pride.

His friend, Tyne Leslie, nodded in an attempt at agreement. It was the best, at the moment, that he could do. Joining Allan, he too looked out.

Already, he observed wonderingly, the mighty panorama of sunset was only a red stain on the carpet below them; Sumatra lay across the equator like a roasting fish on a spit. Outside: a starry void. In his stomach: another starry void.

At once you begin to live... But this was Tyne’s first trip on the spy patrol; living meant extra adrenalin walloping through his heart valves, the centipede track of prickles over his skin, the starry void in the lesser intestine.

‘It’s the sort of feeling you don’t get behind an office desk,’ he said. Chalk one up to the office desk, he thought.

Allan nodded, saying nothing. His silences were always positive. When the rest of the world was talking as it never had before, Allan Cunliffe remained silent. Certainly he had as many missed feelings about the Rosks as anyone else on Earth: but he kept the lid on them. IT was that quality as much as any other that had guaranteed a firm friendship between Allan and Tyne, long before the latter followed his friend’s lead and joined the Space Service.

‘Let’s get forward and see Murray,’ Allan said, clapping Tyne on the back. Undoubtedly he had divined something of the other’s feelings...

Edition details

• Publisher: New English Library Ltd
• Publication date: 1973
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0450015017
• ISBN 13: 9780450015014
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128