（外文电子版资料）1963 Flandry 04 - Let the Spacemen Beware (Night Face, The).docVIP

THE NIGHT FACE originally published as Let the Spacemen Beware.t Copyright ?, 1963 by Ace Books, Inc. INTRODUCTION Copyright ?, 1978 by Poul Anderson WORD Copyright ?, 1978 by Sandra Miesel All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher. All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. An ACE Book Second Ace Edition: February 1978 Cover art by Michael Whelan Printed in U.S.A. INTRODUCTION At first this was a novelette called A Twelvemonth and a Day. I revised and expanded it for book publication, whereupon the then editor stuck it with the ridiculous title Let the Spacemen Beware.t My thanks to Jim Baen, now in charge, for recognizing that readers have more intelligence than they were once given credit for having. In return, I admit that hes probably right in considering the original name too cumbersome; hence the new one. Otherwise the tale is unchanged. It can stand alone, without reference to anything else. However, you may be interested to know that it does fit into the same future history as the Polesotechnic League and the Terran Empire. Nicholas van Rijn, David Falkayn, Christopher Holm, Dominic Flandry, and quite a few more characters lived in its past. Now the Empire has fallen, the Long Night descended upon that tiny fraction of the galaxy which man once explored and colonized. Like Romano-Britons after the last legion had withdrawn, people out in the former marches of civilization do not even know what is happening at its former heart. They have the THE NIGHT FACE physical capability of going there and finding out, but are too busy surviving. They are also, all unawares, generating whole new societies of their own. I do not, myself, believe that history will necessarily repeat itself to this extent. Nor do I den