Scorpio Invasion by Alan Burt Akers

loop around his waist and immediately waist and line were sucked down. “Heave!” I shouted.
    We tailed on and hauled. With gruesome sucking sounds Ornol started to lift, and then fell back.
    “The shuckerchun will drag us all down!” Rollo was more than distressed now. His face was gaunt with the terror of his knowledge. “They can creep under houses and engulf them. We’re done for!”
    “Loptyg! Get to the controls. Lift off!”
    He didn’t bother with a Quidang. He jumped for the levers and slammed the lift control over. The voller lurched. I could see the brilliant treacherous green flowing up the side of the other voller like a tide.
    “Lift off!” I bellowed.
    Loptyg thrust the lever over all the way. The airboat shuddered. She quivered like an exhausted stallion. Ornol’s head was going under.
    “Come on! Come on!”
    With a sound not quite like a cork coming out of a bottle, or that sound magnified and added to by a sloshing sucking, the voller leaped skywards.
    Ornol dangled below, his powerful hands gripping the line, looking up.
    “By Vox!” he said, and spat. “It tastes worse than a dopa den’s floor at chucking out time.”
    Rollo sagged back. He saw me looking at him.
    “I was sure we were all done for. No one can escape a shuckerchun.”
    “Unless they fly.”
    “Unless they fly.”
    Ornol was hauled in over the side. He stank.
    “For the sweet sake of Opaz,” he said, spitting overside. “Find a river.” Then he said: “I give you thanks.” To him, the peril was over and now he wanted to clean up. Hard, the men of my juruk.
    As for Rollo, he was only too pleased to be flying through thin air.

Chapter eight
    I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, have led a rackety picaresque life on Kregen. This has been forced on me not entirely through the machinations of the Star Lords. Duty, inclination, self-interest, have led me from country to country and continent to continent. I have made many friends and many enemies on that gorgeous and horrendous world four hundred light years from the planet of my birth. My own true inclination is to settle down with Delia in Esser Rarioch, our palace home in Valka. Well, perhaps one day that ambition may be fulfilled. As it is, the Everoinye put tasks into my hands that, for the good of Paz, must be fulfilled.
    Once the Star Lords had regained contact with me — and the concept that they didn’t know where I was on Kregen came as an intriguing supposition, as a shock, by Krun! — they’d hoick me up out of wherever I happened to be and dump me down somewhere else to get on with my destiny.
    That damnfool Scorpion had dropped me. Well, to be fair, he’d been unsettled by the acrid green thrusts of Ahrinye. All the same, I regarded with a somewhat leery anticipation my next jaunt with the phantom blue Scorpion.
    For the moment we got on with what we had to do here. Ornol Skobog cleaned himself up in a pretty little stream running between a fine stand of trees. We dug out the provisions they’d brought, and the archer of 1EZB, Nath the Dorvenfull, brought down a fine deer. We all ate prodigiously.
    Then I went at Ornol and the others with a fine old spate of authority.
    During that emotional wrangle I sent Rollo off out of it. I told him to go into lupu and contact his old tutor, Gal-ag-Foroming, and give him my sincere thanks for passing on the message. This was not just to keep Rollo out of the argument with my lads. I felt it needful to thank the Wizard of Loh. After all, I’d been pretty sharp with him.
    By the time those rascals of my Guard Corps were convinced I must fly on down south alone, Rollo had not returned from the woods. So I went off after him, suddenly uneasy that he might have run into more trouble.
    I found him in a small natural clearing. He was sitting down comfortably with his back against a tree. He looked up as I approached.
    “Ah, Dray! I thought you would be along soon.”
    The voice was not that of Rollo the