Click on image to enlarge.

	Regular				Club
You Pay:	$6.99				$5.94

eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: For many centuries, Earth Planet had been under observation from the dying world of Typhon. There was nothing the Typhonians did not know about its physical properties and the life style of its people. From where they stood, they reckoned it was gift-wrapped as a new home for their ancient race. The takeover would bring death or enslavement to the existing population, but then they were only primitives, hardly counted as human by Typhonian standards! Colonel Andrew Mackay and his special duty section were the first to tangle with the invaders. By the time he identified that Earth Planet had a problem, the Typhonians had already established their unseen bridgehead. D-Day was close.

eBook Publisher: Golden Apple, Wallasey, Published: UK, 1981
Fictionwise Release Date: September 2004

11 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [794 KB], eReader (PDB) [189 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [179 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [156 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [156 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [210 KB], hiebook (KML) [373 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [212 KB], iSilo (PDB) [147 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [182 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [213 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [237 KB]
Words: 53510
Reading time: 152-214 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

The bleep of a pinger alerted Averil Orlop. Her services were required. She left the long operations panel and checked out the desk. A winking, red telltale identified the caller. It was the top man himself. Before she switched herself on stream to answer, she automatically lifted both hands to check that her thickly-waved, black hair was lying in a seemly fashion to its scalp and even gave a lithe wiggle, to shake out any creases in her trim, apricot shirt.

The caller was General R. D. Waldraven and she was wasting her time. He would not have noticed, if her hair had held a nest of living vipers and her shirt had gone glass clear in the wash. He had channelled all his remaining drives into the business. To be fair to Averil, who was as nubile as any operations clerk anywhere to be found, his options were limited. An accident in the field, where he had been the most brilliant special agent of his day, had left him with more hardware than biological tissue in his body. He was virtually anchored to a life-support system. His pleasures lay on an intellectual plane and mainly in the exercise of power. There was some excuse for the gravel edge to his voice as he asked Averil for a sitrep on 239.

Averil punched out the reference. A number of insets glowed to life on the video panel on Waldraven's desk and on her monitor. There was a full-length frontal shot of Colonel Andrew Mackay, two profiles and a close view of his face. She had homed in on 239 without error and, seen cold, there was no entertainment value. It could have been a mock up of Neanderthal Man. Fairish, craggy, bulked out by a close trimmed, ginger beard, two metres in his socks, the Colonel would raise doubts about evolution. Even dealing with the image on her screen, Averil had to damp down a small, nervous shudder as she met the direct glare of his intense, pale blue eyes. But she was a dedicated girl and she read off the data in a firm voice.

Waldraven was getting it three ways. He heard it live in Averil's warm contralto; he could read it off the record, which was being copied for reference; he was getting a tape extruded from the outfall of his robot secretary.