Summary
When the Catteni ships descended on earth it was one of the most terrifying experiences humankind had ever known. Kris Bjornsen, along with thousands of others, found herself herded by forcewhips into the hold of giant spaceships to be transported to the slave compounds of an alien planet. And even then it wasn't over. For, after a partially successful escape attempt, Kris was once more shipped across space - to an apparently empty and untamed planet. The Catteni just dumped an assorted load of humans and aliens on the strange world and left them to see what would happen.
Brilliantly the refugees began to organize themselves into a pattern of survival. The planet was eerie and not as empty as it seemed. For someone - something - had built giant storage barns - the planet was being used as a huge larder - for an entity they could not comprehend.
As Kris and her patrol set out to explore the enigmatic world she had yet another problem to contend with - the presence of Zainal, the high-ranking patrician Catteni who had been abandoned with the rest of them. Zainal was strong, brilliant, and . . . kind, and Kris was puzzled by this presence, his personality, and above all by the tenuous tie she felt towards this man - who was not a man but one of the hated Catteni.
- The Worlds of Anne McCaffrey © 2006The Official Anne McCaffrey website
Excerpt
Kristin Bjornsen wondering if summer on the planet Barevi could possibly be the only season. There had been remarkably little variation in temperature in the nine months since she'd arrived there. She'd been four months in what appeared to be the single, sprawling city of the planet during her enslavement and now had racked up five months of comparative freedom - albeit a parlous hand-to-mouth survival - in this jungle, after her escape from the city in the flitter she'd stolen.
Her sleeveless one-piece tunic was made of indestructible material, but it wouldn't suit in the cold weather. The scooped neckline was indecently low and the skirt ended midway down her long thighs. It was closely modeled, in fact, after the miniskirted sheath she'd been wearing to class that spring morning when Catteni ships had descended on Denver, one of fifty cities across the world that had been used as object lessons by the conquerors. One moment she was on her way to the college campus; the next, she was one of thousands of astonished and terrified Denverites being driven by forcewhips up the ramp of a spaceship that made the Queen Elizabeth look like a tub toy. Once past the black maw of the ship, Kris, with the others, swiftly succumbed to the odorless gas. When she and her fellow prisoners had awakened, they were in the slave compounds of Barevi, waiting to be sold.
Kris aimed the avocado-sized pit of the gorupear she had just eaten at the central stalk of a nearby thicket of the purple-colored thornbushes. The bush instantly rained tiny darts in all directions. Kris laughed. She had bet it would take less than five minutes for the young bush to rearm itself. And it had. The larger ones took longer to position new missiles. She'd had reason to find out.
Absently she reached above her head for another gorupear. Nothing from good old Terra rivaled them for taste. She bit appreciatively into the firm reddish flesh of the fruit, and its succulent juices dribbled down her chin onto her tanned breasts. Tugging at the strap of her slip-tight tunic, she brushed the juices away. The outfit was great for tanning, but when winter comes? And should she concentrate on gathering nuts and drying gorupears on the rocks by the river for the cold season? She wrinkled her nose at the half-eaten pear. They were mighty tasty but a steady diet of them left her hungering for other basic dietary requirements. By watching the creatures of the jungle, she'd been able to guess what might be edible for her. Remembering her survival course gave her the clue to superficial testing on her skin. She'd had two violent reactions to stuff the ground animals seemed to devour in quantity but the avians had guided her to other comestibles. Her term in the food preparation unit of her "master" had given her other commodities to look for and a few of those grew wild in this jungle. Still, there were little yellow-scaled fish from the river that had provided her with both protein and exercise.
A low-pitched buzz attracted her attention. She got to her feet, balanced carefully on the high limb of the tree. Parting the branches, she peered up at the cloudless sky. Two of the umpteen moons that circled Barevi were visible in the west. Below them, dots that gave off sparkles of reflected sunlight were swooping and diving.
The boys have called another hunt, she mused to herself and, still smiling, leaned against the tree trunk to take advantage of her grandstand seat. The jungle had quite a few really big, really savage creatures which she had managed to avoid, making like a jungle heroine and taking to the trees and vines. By dint of hard work and sweat, she had used the useful tools from the kit on the flitter to tie the vines to trees that led to and from her favorite food-browsing spots and to the river. Her escape routes were all aerial.
- Excerpt taken from chapter one of "Freedom's Landing"Copyright © 1995 by Anne McCaffrey
