History of the Kurii Civilization and the Steel Worlds

History of the Kurii Civilization and the Steel Worlds

“You see?” asked the beast, pointing upward, it seemed at a starry sky above our head.

“Yes,” I said.  I did not recognize the patch of the heavens above us.

“That was our star, “ he said, “a yellow, medium-sized, slow-rotating star with a planetary system, one small enough to have sufficient longevity to nourish life, one large enough to have a suitable habitable zone.”

“Not unlike Tor-tu-Gor, or Sol,” I said.  “the common star of Earth and Gor.”

“Precisely,” he said.

“Tell me of your world,” I said.

“My world is of steel,” it said.  It seemed bitter.

“Your old world,” I said.

“I never saw it, of course,” he said, “It was, of course, of a suitable size and distance from its star. It was small enough to permit the escape of hydrogen, large enough to retain oxygen.  It was not so close to the star as to be a ball of scalding rock nor so far as to be a frozen spheroid.”

“It maintained temperatures at which water could be in a liquid form.”

“Yes,” it said, “and the mechanisms, the atomic necessities, of chemical evolution were initiated, and the macromolecules and protocells, in time, were formed.”

“Gases were exchanged, and the hydrogen-dominated atmosphere yielded to one in which free oxygen was a major component.”

“It became green,” it said.

“Life began its climb anew,” I said.

“Out of the two billion years of the wars and the killings, and the eatings and the huntings, came my people,” it said.  “We were the triumph of evolution in all its heartless savagery,” it said.

“And the doom of your world,” I said.

“We do not speak of what happened,” it said. It moved to the wall and, passing its paw before a switch, caused the projection on the ceiling to vanish.  It turned then to look upon me.  “Our world was very beautiful,” it said.  “We will have another.”  (Beasts of Gor)

 

 

It began, I suppose, some thousands of years ago when Kurii, in internecine wars, destroyed the viability of a native world.  Their state at that time was sufficiently advanced technologically to construct small steel worlds in orbit, each some pasangs in diameter. The remnants of a shattered species then, as a world burned below them, turned hunting to the plains of the stars.  We do not know how long their hunt took.  But we do know the worlds, long ago, entered the system of a slow-revolving, medium-sized yellow star occupying a peripheral position in one of nature’s bounteous, gleaming, strewn spiral universes.

They had found their quarry, a world.

They had found two worlds, on spoken of as Earth, the other as Gor.  (Beasts of Gor)

 

The complex, then, that in which I was prisoner, I conjectured, might well have a clock similar to those used on Kur ships, and in the distant steel worlds, a clock doubtless once developed for use on their former world, doubtless long since destroyed in their internecine wars. (Beasts of Gor)

 

I closed my eyes. “Surrender Gor,” had come the message, presumed from the steel worlds.  “Surrender Gor.”  And, earlier, months ago, a caravan boy, Achmed, the son of the merchant, Farouk of Kasra, had found the inscription on a rock, “Beware the steel tower.”  (Tribesmen of Gor)

 

Somewhere up there, beyond atmospheres, beyond the orbits of Gor, and Earth and mars, in a boulder-strewn enigmatic blackness of space, in the silence of the fragments of the asteroid belt, were the steel worlds, the lairs and domiciles of Kurii.  (Tribesmen of Gor)

 

I did not think that Kurii, again, would be willing to sacrifice this world, to achieve another.  Already, in their remote past, they had lost one world, their own.  (Tribesmen of Gor)

 

“Yes,” said Misk. “We are at war.”
I leaned back.
“But it had been so for twenty thousand years,” said Misk.
“And in that time you have not managed to bring the war to a successful conclusion?” I asked.

“Priest-Kings,” said Misk, “unlike humans are not aggressive organisms.  It is enough for us to have the security of our own territory.  Moreover, those whom you call the Others no longer have their own world. It died with their sun.  They live in a set of Master Ships, each almost an artificial planet in itself. As long as these ships remain outside the fifth ring, that of the planet Earthmen call Jupiter, the Goreans Hesius, after a legendary hero of Ar, we do not fight.”

I nodded.  Earth and Gor, I knew shared the third ring.

“Would it not be safer if these Others were driven from the system?” I asked.

“We have driven them from the system eleven times,” said Misk. “But each time they return.”

“I see,“  I said.

“They will not close with us,” said Misk.

“Will you attempt to drive them away again?” I asked.

“I doubt it,” said Misk. “such expeditions are extremely time-consuming and dangerous, and extremely difficult to carry through.  Their ships have sensing devices perhaps the match of our own; they scatter; they have weapons, primitive perhaps, but yet effective at ranges of a hundred thousand pasangs.”

I said nothing.

“For some thousands of years they have, except for continual probes, usually tests to prove the sex of their Dominants, remained beyond the fifth ring.  Now, it seems they become more bold.”

“The Others,” I said, “surely could conquer Earth.”

“We have not permitted it,” said Misk.

I nodded. “I suspected as much,” I said.

“It is within the fifth ring,” pointed out Misk.

I looked at him in surprise.

His antennae curled in amusement.  “Besides,” said Misk, “we are not unfond of humans.”

I laughed.

“Further,” said Misk, “the Others are themselves a not uninteresting species, and we have permitted certain of them, prisoners taken from disabled probe ships, to live on this world, much as we have humans.”

I was startled.

“They do not live in the same areas, on the whole, that humans do,” said Misk. “Moreover, we insist that they respect the weapon and technology laws of Priest-Kings, as a condition for their permitted survival. “

“You limit their technology levels just as you do humans?” I asked.

“Certainly,” said Misk.

“But the Others of the ships,” I said, “They remain dangerous.” (Assassin of Gor)

 

But if Priest-Kings, eventually, should halt the invasion, that, too, might be of interest to the Kurii of the steel ships, remote, prowling outside the fifth ring, that of the planet on Earth called Jupiter, that on Gor called Hesius, after one of Ar’s legendary heroes.  (Marauders of Gor)

 

Kurii, in their past, at least, were apparently torn by internecine strife, disrupted by “racial” and “civil” wars among themselves.  It is not impossible that the defertilization or destruction of their former home was a consequence of such altercations.  (Marauders of Gor)