Megalomania Read online

  Tannen spoke now, easily despite unease. “Hearing no objection, I will proceed to the prime business. Chairman Croyd, are you standing for re— election?” Croyd stood, assented, sat. “Prior to discussion by this board, do you wish to enter any remarks?” Croyd replied, holding his middle-baritone voice in restraint: “Not prior to discussion, sir.”

  Tannen queried: “Does anyone wish to arise as a competing candidate for the chair?”

  Dino Trigg stood: hair and trim beard golden blond, eyes a surprising dark brown, handsome-flexible-potent. His generally unexpected selfpresentation startled and even shocked his fellow ministers and some board members.

  Inquired unrufflable Tannen: “First Minister Trigg, you are challenging Chairman Croyd for the chair of this board?”

  Dino opened mouth to speak, then hesitated. Croyd and Tannen were rigid: it was the if-node, the choice point…

  Dino’s mouth-corners quirked up; he spread hands; whimsically he remarked, “I beg the President’s pardon; I am all full of something that I wished to report about stellar jets, momentarily I lost track of these proceedings, this is not the time—”

  Dino sat down, and he was smiling serenely for the first time in years.

  Board-members, ministers, and all the scene flickered and vanished.

  Out of nonspace came Croyd’s voice: “You have passed, Minister Trigg. Unhappily, all the galaxy remembers your former rebellion in this board room. But luckily, only a few of us will ever remember about Schnarliwarli. This frees the creativity of Tannen and me to paint an ameliorating picture during perhaps a two-year period of Trigg-absence.

  “What would you think, Dino, of a hitch as Galactic Ambassador to Hudibras?”

  NEW DIMENSIONS IN MILITARY SF

  Charles Ingrid

  THE SAND WARS

  He was a soldier fighting against both mankind’s alien foe and the evil at the heart of the human Dominion Empire, trapped in an alien-altered suit of armor which, if worn too long, could transform him into a sand warrior—a no-longer human berserker.

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  W. Michael Gear

  THE SPIDER TRILOGY

  The Prophets of the lost colony planet called World could see the many pathways of the future, and when the conquering Patrol Ships of the galaxy-spanning Directorate arrived, they found the warriors of World ready, armed and waiting.

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  John Steakley

  □ ARMOR

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