Read Dramocles: An Intergalactic Soap Opera for Free Online Page B

pattern in confusion. At this moment the Lekkians attacked. A shock force of four hundred Lekkian and Drikanean troops mounted on mud skimmers penetrated Rux’s right flank. They were armed with sledgehammers and welding torches. In a matter of minutes they had created a combination traffic jam and junkyard, and they retired with insignificant losses. A second thrust through the center brought the robots to a complete halt. When the sun set, the thin Lekkian line was intact. Rux unhappily retired his troops for refueling, and wired Dramocles for more and better equipment.

 
    12
    Prince Chuch dispatched Vitello to the principality of Ystrad, with an urgent request that his sister, Drusilla, receive him. Upon receiving an affirmative answer, he arranged an immediate departure. He decided to pilot his own space yacht there, since Dramocles might soon ground all nonmilitary spacecraft, if he had not done so already. When he arrived at the spaceport, however, he was gratified to see that traffic was moving normally. He had a moment of anxiety when he gave his name to Ground Control and requested clearance. But it was granted without delay, and soon he was aloft.
    Once airborne, Chuch fed his destination into the ship’s computer. The city and outlying regions of Glorm fell away below him. He crossed the Sardapian Sea, and saw, gray in the distance, the mountains of Glypher. He crossed the Box Forest and soon the Euripean River appeared, a meandering silver thread. This marked the easternmost border of Drusilla’s domain. Below him was the land of Ystrad, a green place of forested hills. To the north the gleaming surface of Lake Melachaibo came into view, and on its near shore was Tarnamon, the many-turreted castle wherein his sister, Drusilla, lived. Receiving landing clearance, Chuch set down at the small spaceport nearby. Vitello was there to meet him.
    The inhabitants of Ystrad, the Ystradgnu, were a non-Glormish people of considerable antiquity. They were a gentle folk, and hospitable to strangers, except on the occasions when they needed a sacrifice for one of their deities. Their principal exports were poetry and songs, which were in great demand among the races of the galaxy with no poetry or songs of their own. The annotation and analyzation of the Ystradgnu arts provided an entire industry for the analogists of the neighboring island of Rungx.
    Most of the Ystradgnu made their living by grazing herds of porcupines on their green hillsides and exporting the quills to the Uurks, a nonhuman people who had never disclosed why they needed them.
    The Ystradgnu had a method of ground transportation unlike anything else on Glorm. Travel between points on Ystrad was effected by trampoline networks. The trampolines, spaced an average of fifteen feet apart, crisscrossed the countryside. The Ystradgnu had been building and maintaining them since time beyond memory. The trampolines were made of heavy canvas and dyed in various bright colors–though by ancient tradition never yellow–and a large part of Ystrad’s revenue went to their upkeep. Viewed from the air, they appeared as complex patterns of multicolored dots. There was a legend that these patterns were part of a giant mandala, left there by the mysterious race that had introduced the porcupine to Ystrad and then vanished. It was a colorful sight on a Saturday, when the quill collectors and farmers bounced to the city for the weekly fair and quill skill competitions. All of that trampoline work gave the Ystradgnu the short, thick, heavily muscled legs that they considered the epitome of both masculine and feminine beauty, and which enabled the quill collectors to scramble up and down the hills after their porcupines.
    “Ridiculous,” Prince Chuch declared, and insisted on a more dignified means of transportation. There did exist a taxi service for “spindleleggers,” as all non-Ystradgnu were called. A cab took Chuch and Vitello to the great gothic castle on a crag