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“A True Story”
Page 3
“PHAETHON” he said. "He's the king of the Sun people.
Folks live there,of course, just like they do in the Moon. There's been
a war on for ages. Here's how it started. Once upon a time, I collected
all our poor people, and promised to give them a new start on the Morning
Star - it was totally undeveloped and no one lived there. Phaethon, out
of sheer spite, ambushed us halfway with his Termite Terminators. They use
ants as horses, but but they can be up to 2000 feet long, with wings, and
very nasty feelers. So we lost, and went home. But I am sticking to my plan.
We are off to war again, and this time we shall found our colony in the
new world. Please, accompany me: you can be Hipporaptors, with a royal Vulture
each, and a full suit of armour. We ride out tomorrow." "Fair enough", I said. "You're the man".
We stayed the night as his guests: but we were woken at dawn to take up our positions. Our intelligence told us the enemy were very close. Our army (the cavalry, that is) was 100,000 strong (not counting our batmen, or the sappers, infantry and foreign allies). Of them the 80,000 Hipporaptors were mounted on Vultures, while 20,000 were on Veggie-copters. The Veggie-copter is also a huge bird - it has greens instead of feathers, and its wings are uncannily like lettuce-leaves.
Lucian goes on to describe the forces on each side, in true tradition established by Homer in Iliad Book2. The Lunese infantry numbered 60,000,000, and was drawn up on an artificial plain, built by local spiders (each far larger than a Greek island). They'd been made to spin a web between the moon and the Morning Star, and this was the battlefield. Against the bird/vegetable forces of the Lunese, the Sunsters went in for insect/veggie combinations. Like, for example, the Aero-jivers, who used radish-mortars, that killed people with their stink. The battle was a glorious victory, though, for Endymion and the Lunese - a short lived one, though, because just as they were celebrating, the Cloud-Centaurs arrived - allies of Phaethon's who should have turned up earlier. They are half man (torsos the size of the Colossus of Rhodes) and half horse (bodies the size of merchant-ships). Lucian refused to say how many there were, on the grounds that no one would believe him! Led by the dastardly Archer (Sagittarius himself), they routed the Lunese, killed most of his birds, and chased Endymion back home to the Moon.
As for us, we were taken prisoner - our hands tied behind our backs with spider's web. The Sunsters built a massive wall of cloud in the air to stop the sun's rays reaching the moon, causing a permanent total eclipse.
Alarmed at the prospect of living in complete darkness, Endymion sued for peace. He had to promise never to make war on the Sun again, and to allow the Stars to keep their independence. He'd have to pay an annual tribute of 10,000 gallons of dew to the Sun's king, deliver 10,000 hostages. The Morning Star would be colonised jointly, and would be open to all.
And so peace was made, and the cloud wall was taken down. We and the other prisoners were released, and what a fantastic welcome we got from Endymion when we returned! He begged us to stay with him, and promised me his own son in marriage (there's no such thing as a woman-in-the-moon). I was tempted, but said I'd actually rather go home, if he could get us lowered back down to the sea. Reluctantly he agreed to let us go , if we stayed to party for the next seven days…
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