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"We'd have most of what we predicted of the conquest of space, if we hadn't ignored parasite control."
- Larry Niven
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| Hammock Crutches | ||
| How would worm-like creatures walk about under heavy gravity? |
| Humanity steeled itself for the coming ordeal of horror under the Troxxt.
THEY WERE truly worm-like in form. As soon as the two night-black cylinders had landed, they strode, from their ships, their tiny segmented bodies held off the ground by a complex harness supported Dy long and slender metal crutches. They erected a dome-like fort around each ship — one in Australia and one in the Ukraine — captured the few courageous individuals who had ventured close to their landing-sites, and disappeared back into the dark craft with their squirming prizes... And over all — courteously caring for us like an intelligent parent — were our mentors, taking their giant supervisory strides on metallic crutches, while their pale little bodies lay curled in the hammocks that swung from each paired length of shining leg. |
| Technovelgy from Liberation of Earth,
by William Tenn. Published by Future Science Fiction in 1953 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the robass from The Quest for Saint Aquin (1951) by Anthony Boucher and the the centipede-machine from Monsters of Mars (1931) by Edmond Hamilton, the centipede from Killing Titan (2015) by Greg Bear and the Walker Wagon from Farmer in the Sky (1950) by Robert Heinlein.
(Walker Wagon from Farmer in the Sky)
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| Congress Considers Automatic Emergency Braking, One Hundred Years Too Late |
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'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
'Henry... assumed the curious absent look of a robot talking on the TBR circuits.'
'The king, an old hand in the running of tyrannies, instantly grasped the directions...'
'...a hemispherical force field enclosing his head.'
'Then he became aware of a gentle pressure pushing him away from the ship.'
'And now they wre busily transforming all their companions, and so on, and so on...'
