（外文电子版资料）Anderson, Poul - Starways.docVIP

FIVE OF OUR WORLDS ARE MISSING! That was the essence of the report that shocked the galactic Nomads at their annual meeting. For each of the five mighty star-ships reported vanished was a world of its own-a man-made, self-sustaining city-state housing thousands of people. The Nomads themselves were an unplanned by product of mans conquest of the stars. They were the gypsies of the distant future, the restless rovers of outer space. But to Joachim of the Peregrine they represented a way of life that was to be dearly defended. So it fell to him to make his own world-ship the bait in a cosmic trap set to catch the galaxys unknown foemen! STAR WAYS by POUL ANDERSON ACE BOOKS, INC. 1120 Avenue of the Americas New York 36, N.Y. STAR WAYS Copyright, 1956, by Poul Anderson An Ace Book, by arrangement with Avalon Books. To the MFS- all of them Printed in U.S.A. CHAPTER I Rendezvous THERE IS A PLANET beyond the edge of the known, and its name is Rendezvous. Few worlds are more lovely to the eyes of men. As the weary ships come in from space and loneliness, they see a yellow star against the great cold constellations; and nearing, they see its crowded glory swell to incandescence. The planet grows as the ships strain closer; it becomes a sapphire shield banded with clouds, blurred with rain and wind and mountain mists. The ships sweep around the planet, mooring themselves to an orbit between the moons, and it is not long before the boats spring from them and rush down out of the sky to land. And then, for a little while, the planet comes alive with noise and movement as human life spills free. This might have been Earth, in some forgotten age before the glaciers went south. Here, there is the broad green swell of land, reaching out to a remote horizon. Far away, mountains begin; on the other side is the sea. The sky is big here, lifting above the world to blue immensity. But the difference is what haunts you. There are trees, but they are not the oak an