
In a relentless desert where armored beetles crawl beneath endless dunes, a twenty‑one‑year‑old soldier named Dworn fights to survive. Half of him is flesh, half a five‑year‑old steel shell he pilots as if it were his own skin, and the night finds him checking a fuel gauge that hovers near empty. The moon‑lit sky watches as he awakens, tests his silent motor and prepares for the trek toward his horde’s gathering.
With supplies scarce, Dworn follows the fresh tread of a massive desert caterpillar, hoping its hidden caches will refill his dwindling stores. He weaves between sand‑devil pits, evades prowling enemy drones, and feels every vibration of his machine as a reminder of the thin line between youth and warrior. Listeners are drawn into his careful, tension‑filled crawl across wind‑scoured ridges, where each decision tests the fragile balance of flesh and metal that defines his very identity.
Language
en
Duration
~2 hours (123K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Greg Weeks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2010-04-20
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
Subjects

1924–1990
A Golden Age science-fiction writer best remembered for lively short stories in the pulp magazines of the 1940s and 1950s, he also built a long academic career outside fiction. His work turns up in classic anthologies, giving later readers a window into mid-century magazine SF.
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