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A book in the Catfantastic series, 1990
Two of the biggest names in the fantasy field have put together a unique collection of fantastical cat tales for friends of furry felines. Cats work a special magic in these stories from the future, from the past, and from dimensions people never dream of.
Two centuries after an atomic war on earth, a silver-haired mutant sets out on a dangerous search for a lost city of the ruined civilization.
The "Solar Queen" is in real trouble. They've just saved thousands of lives in a near disaster and are on the way to cash in on their newfound hero status with some profitable trade. But when they drop out of hyperspace and almost crash into a deserted ship, it's all they can do not to become a wreck like the one they've stumbled across. Luckily, the derelict "Scavenger" has just enough fuel to get both ships to the nearest port, a space habitat that is home to humans and two other races. Unfortunately, when they attempt to file for scavenger rights, a crooked syndicate of bureaucrats takes an interest and threatens to scuttle Captain Jellico's crew and their claim to the derelict.
When Raf Kurbi's Terran spaceship burst into unexplored skies of the far planet Astra and was immediately made welcome by the natives of a once-mighty metropolis, Kurbi was unaware of three vital things:
One was that Astra already harbored an Earth colony—descended from refugees from the world of the previous century.
Two was that these men and women were facing the greatest danger of their existence from a new outburst of the inhuman fiends who had once tyrannized Astra.
Three was that the natives who were buying Kurbi's science know-how were those very fiends—and their intentions were implacably deadly for all humans, whether Earth born or STAR BORN.
It's an Andre Norton space adventure—and therefore the tops in its field!
The Throg task force struck the Terran survey camp a few minutes after dawn, without warning, and with a deadly precision which argued that the aliens had fully reconnoitered and prepared that attack. Eye-searing lances of energy lashed back and forth across the base with methodical accuracy. And a single cowering witness, flattened on a ledge in the heights above, knew that when the last of those yellow-red bolts fell, nothing human would be left alive down there.
And so Shann Lantee, most menial of the Terrans attached to the camp on the planet Warlock, was left alone and weaponless in the strange, hostile world, the human prey of the aliens from space and the aliens on the ground alike.
