Storm Over Warlock

Storm Over Warlock, by Andre
Norton

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Title: Storm Over Warlock
Author: Andre Norton
Release Date: March 9, 2007 [EBook #20788]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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STORM OVER WARLOCK
by

ANDRE NORTON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
STORM OVER WARLOCK
Copyright ©, 1960, by Andre Norton
An Ace Book, by arrangement with The World Publishing Co.
All Rights Reserved
Printed in U.S.A.
+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's
Note | | | | Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the | |
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. | | | | Front matter
consisting of a blurb and a list of other | | publications by the author has
been moved to the end of the | | text. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+

1. DISASTER
The Throg task force struck the Terran Survey camp a few minutes
after dawn, without warning, and with a deadly precision which argued
that the aliens had fully reconnoitered and prepared that attack.
Eye-searing lances of energy lashed back and forth across the base with
methodical accuracy. And a single cowering witness, flattened on a
ledge in the heights above, knew that when the last of those yellow-red
bolts fell, nothing human would be left alive down there. His teeth
closed hard upon the thick stuff of the sleeve covering his thin forearm,
and in his throat a scream of terror and rage was stillborn.
More than caution kept him pinned on that narrow shelf of rock.
Watching that holocaust below, Shann Lantee could not force himself

to move. The sheer ruthlessness of the Throg move-in left him
momentarily weak. To listen to a tale of Throgs in action, and to be an
eye-witness to such action, were two vastly different things. He
shivered in spite of the warmth of the Survey Corps uniform.
As yet he had sighted none of the aliens, only their plate-shaped flyers.
They would stay aloft until their long-range weapon cleared out all
opposition. But how had they been able to make such a complete
annihilation of the Terran force? The last report had placed the nearest
Throg nest at least two systems away from Warlock. And a patrol lane
had been drawn about the Circe system the minute that Survey had
marked its second planet ready for colonization. Somehow the beetles
had slipped through that supposedly tight cordon and would now
consolidate their gains with their usual speed at rooting. First an energy
attack to finish the small Terran force; then they would simply take
over.
A month later, or maybe two months, and they could not have done it.
The grids would have been up, and any Throg ship venturing into
Warlock's amber-tinted sky would abruptly cease to be. In the race for
survival as a galactic power, Terra had that one small edge over the
swarms of the enemy. They need only stake out their new-found world
and get the grids assembled on its surface; then that planet would be
locked to the beetles. The critical period was between the first
discovery of a suitable colony world and the erection of grid control.
Planets in the past had been lost during that time lag, just as Warlock
was lost now.
Throgs and Terrans ... For more than a century now, planet time, they
had been fighting their queer, twisted war among the stars. Terrans
hunted worlds for colonization, the old hunger for land of their own
driving men from the over-populated worlds, out of Sol's system to the
far stars. And those worlds barren of intelligent native life, open to
settlers, were none too many and widely scattered. Perhaps half a dozen
were found in a quarter century, and of that six maybe only one was
suitable for human life without any costly and lengthy adaption of man
or world. Warlock was one of the lucky finds which came so seldom.

Throgs were predators, living on the loot they garnered. As yet,
mankind had not been able to discover whether they did indeed swarm
from any home world. Perhaps they lived eternally on board their plate
ships with no permanent base, forced into a wandering life by the
destruction of the planet on which they had originally been spawned.
But they were raiders now, laying waste defenseless worlds, picking up
the