（外文电子版资料）1997 Harvest of Stars 04 - Fleet of Stars.docVIP

Poul Anderson The Fleet Of Stars Scanned on April 03, 1 IN THE ANCIENT faith of her people, Amaterasu was the Sun Goddess, from whom flowed the light that gives life. The discoverers of a world far and strange named it for her because they hoped that someday their kind would make it blossom. The explorers that first went there were not human. Nor were the pioneers that followed, but they wrought mightily, until at last this Amaterasu could begin to nurture a people. One evening about fifty Earth-years later, Anson Guthrie and Demeter Daughter left Port Kestrel, seeking solitude. They could have talked at home, but the news he bore would not let him sit quietly, and she was always glad of open sky. The little town-boats, bridges, brightly colored buildings soon fell behind them, screened off by its trees except for a slender communications mast. A path took them along a fork of the Lily Plantations and industry lay northward. Here was parkland, turf starred with dandelions and harebells, down to a strip of sand. Beyond lapped the Azurian Ocean. On sever On the left, hills rolled upward, shadowful, their groves and greennesses drenched with the long light, houses scattered across them, windows shining. Air blew mild, murmurous, not every daytime fragrance departed. To someone newly come from Earth it would have felt mountaintop-thin; but then, weight was only nine-tenths, and besides, to Guthrie, Earth was a remote memory; to Demeter Daughter, scarcely even that. Elsewhere on the fourth planet of Beta Hydri, glaciers reared above deserts where machines and microbes toiled to broaden the domain of life. On this big subtropical island Tamura, Amaterasu Mother had won her victory and reigned in peace. Or so it had seemed. Man and woman walked awhile along the shore, silent, before Guthrie cleared his throat. Well- he began. It trailed off into the wind. She regarded him. At forty-one biological years, seventy-two of Earths, he remained large, burly, vigorously str