Raising The Stones Read Free Page A

truncated model included all of the occupied worlds and most of the occupied moons but not the outer planets, which didn’t fit the scale and weren’t important for orientation anyhow. When Horgy cleared his throat, the model gave way to actual holography of the Belt as taken from a survey ship, skimming past Bounce and Pedaria and a few of the other fifteen-thousand Belt worlds, the stage pointing out, unnecessarily, that though some of the Belt worlds were settled, some were merely named, while others were only numbered and not even surveyed yet. Belt worlds were tiny to smallish, by and large, a few with native life, some with atmosphere of their own, some with atmosphere factories, many of them with great light-focusing sun-sails behind them, gathering warmth to make the crops grow, farm worlds for the System.
    “This world we now call Hobbs Land,” said Horgy, watching it swim up on cue, a tannish-green blob with an angular darker green belt, blue at its poles, fishbone striped by wispy clouds slanting in from the polar oceans to the equator, “was mapped and sampled by the unmanned survey ship, Theosphes K. Phaspe , some sixty lifeyears ago. About twenty years later, when the relative orbits of Phansure and the newly mapped planet made the attempt economically feasible, Hobbs Land was optioned for settlement by Hobbs Transystem Foods, under the direction of Mysore Hobbs I.”
    “Mysore One died last year,” said the older of the two Phansuris to one of the lovelies. “Marvelous old man, Mysore. Mysore Two’s running things now.”
    Horgy smiled acknowledgement without missing a beat. “Transystem headquarters on Phansure sent a settlement ship with parts for a continuous feed Door and the requisite technicians.”
    The stage showed the technicians putting the Door together, leaping about like fleas. The newly assembled Door glittered with blue fire as construction materials, men, and machines began coming through on a continuous belt. Time-jump holography showed men and machines creating the Central Management structures—administration tower, equipment and repair, warehouses, staff and visitor housing blocks, and recreation complex—all of them sprouting from the ground like mushrooms. At the top of the Admin building, a sign flashed red and yellow: HOBBS LAND, a Farm Settlement World of TRANSYSTEM FOODS.
    Horgy went on, “Construction of the Central Management complex was already well underway when on-planet surveyors discovered that the world, which had been thought to be uninhabited, was actually the home of the Owlbrit people, a presumably ancient race, only twelve of whom were still living at the time of first contact.”
    Visuals of tiny villages, tiny round houses, fat, turnip-shaped creatures dragging laboriously about on their fragile legs.
    “Only twelve of them?” asked Theor Close, the older of the two Phansuri engineers, “Were there really only twelve?”
    “Only twelve,” said Horgy, firmly. “That is, only twelve anybody could find. Plus three or four of their Gods, and all but one of them died immediately.”
    “That’s sad,” said one of the female assistants, a willowy blonde with impossible eyelashes. “Even though they’re not very pretty.”
    Horgy smiled at her, his meltingly adoring smile, the smile that had convinced whole legions of female assistants—Horgy never had anything else—that each of them was the most wonderful woman in the universe. “It was sad,” he admitted, his voice throbbing. “Though, you’re right, they weren’t pretty.”
    “So,” said the other engineer, Betrun Jun. “What happened to the twelve survivors?”
    “Ah …” Horgy reviewed what he had said and found his place again. “Through the immediate efforts of topflight philologists and xenolinguists, it was learned that, far from resenting the presence of humans upon their world, the Owlbrit people welcomed settlement. Such had been foreseen, they said. Such had been promised by