
In a fractured future where the United Nations has splintered into competing blocs—the United States of the Americas, the Soviet Complex, Common Europe, and regional powers such as the Arab Union—a charismatic insurgent known as El Hassan dreams of uniting North Africa under his rule. When his fledgling movement is forced to flee into the Sahara, a team of engineers, soldiers, and a lone Tuareg guide races across the Great Erg to keep him from being captured. Their hover‑lorries skim over dunes, while a rocket‑plane looms overhead, turning the desert into a battlefield of speed and nerves.
The group must decide who will draw fire and who will stay hidden, balancing the fragile hope of the rebellion against the brutal efficiency of the world’s armed forces. As sandstorms swirl and the aircraft makes its passes, each member confronts a personal code—pacifism, duty, or ambition—while the fate of an entire ideology hangs in the balance. Listeners are drawn into a tense cat‑and‑mouse chase that pits technology against desert survival and questions whether borders, breed, or birth can ever truly define a conflict.
Language
en
Duration
~4 hours (244K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2009-12-09
Rights
Public domain in the USA.

1917–1983
Known for big-idea science fiction with a practical, satirical edge, this prolific American writer explored politics, class, and economics long before those themes became common in the genre. His stories were especially popular in magazine science fiction from the 1950s through the 1970s.
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