Worlds in Chaos

Worlds in Chaos

James P. Hogan

Two classic novels from a best-selling master of SF.

Cradle of Saturn

Discoveries made by colonists on the moons of Saturn show that the Solar System has undergone repeated cataclysms and the last was only a few thousand years. This flies in the face of accepted scientific dogma, and is dismissed by Earth’s authorities—until the planet Jupiter suddenly emits a white-hot Earth-sized protoplanet that hurtles sunward on a collision course with Earth.

The Legend That Was Earth

The alien Hyadeans have showered high-tech gifts on the population of Earth and are offering to make a paradise of the planet. But when wealthy socialite Roland Cade discovers the dark underbelly of the alien presence, and learns that his ex-wife is one of the so-called terrorists who are fighting against the alien takeover, he’s forced to choose sides. Soon, he’s caught up in a terrifying conflict that threatens the very existence of the Earth.

Books by James P. Hogan

THE GIANTS SERIES

The Two Moons

The Two Worlds

Mission to Minerva

Code of the Lifemaker

The Immortality Option

The Cradle of Saturn

The Anguished Dawn

Bug Park

Echoes of an Alien Sky

Endgame Enigma

The Genesis Machine

Inherit the Stars

The Legend That Was Earth

Migration

Moon Flower

The Multiplex Man

Paths to Otherwhere

The Proteus Operation

Realtime Interrupt

Thrice Upon a Time

The Two Faces of Tomorrow

Voyage from Yesteryear

Worlds in Chaos
(omnibus)

Cyber Rogues
(omnibus, forthcoming)

COLLECTIONS

Catastrophes, Chaos and Convulsions

Kicking the Sacred Cow

Martian Knightlife

Minds, Machines and Evolution

Rockets, Redheads & Revolution

WORLDS IN CHAOS

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by the estate of James P. Hogan.

Cradle of Saturn copyright © 1999 by James P. Hogan.

The Legend That Was Earth copyright © 2000 by James P. Hogan.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale,
NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 978-1-4767-3694-5

Cover art by Kurt Miller

First Baen paperback printing, December 2014

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York,
NY 10020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hogan, James P.

[Novels. Selections]

Worlds in chaos / James P Hogan.

pages ; cm

"A Baen Books Original."

ISBN 978-1-4767-3694-5 (softcover)

1. Life
on other planets--Fiction.
2. Human-alien
encounters--Fiction. I.
Hogan, James P. Cradle of Saturn II. Hogan, James P. The legend that was Earth. III. Title.

PR6058.O348A6 2014

823'.914--dc23

2014034547

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

eISBN: 978-1-62579-336-2

Electronic Version by Baen Books

www.baen.com

CRADLE OF SATURN

Dedication

To the work of Immanuel Velikovsky and the untiring efforts of Charles Ginenthal.

Acknowledgments

The help and advice of the following people is gratefully appreciated:

Doug Beason, USAF; Jim Dorris; Steve Fairchild; Andrew Fraknoi, Astronomical Society of the Pacific; Charles Ginenthal; Jackie Hogan; Les Johnson, NASA, Marshall Spaceflight Center, Huntsville, AL; Frank Luxem; Melinda Murdock; Jeffrey Slostad; Brent Warner, NASA, Goddard Spaceflight Center, Greenbelt, MD; Betsy Wilcox, USAF

PROLOGUE

Times had always been plentiful. Since the beginning of the age when their ancestors first walked in the world, the People had lived in harmony with the spirits and the elements. Their language had no words for
war
or
want, famine
or
drought
. The forests were vast, the plains fertile. Fair winds brought rain from warm oceans. All of life flourished in abundance.

No memory had been handed down of where the People came from.

Some taught that they were born of Neveya, who ruled the skies during the times of lesser light when the smaller but brighter Sun was absent, and at the end of mortal life they would return to her across the Golden Sea in which the world floated. They learned to farm the lands and tame animals; to study the ways of wood, and stone, and metals; to admire and create music, likenesses, and things of beauty. Their sages pondered over the mysteries of mind and the senses, life and motion, of number and the nature of things. Communities grew under social imperatives and marketplaces for ideas, and became centers of government and commerce.

Iryon stood near the mouth of a broad river, between arms of green hills rising to distant mountains. It was not the largest of cities, but its buildings had been shaped and ornamented with a care that made the whole as much an expression of art as the carved gates and gilded window traceries, or the marble reliefs surrounding the central square. At the summit of one of the five hills on which Iryon was built stood the Astral Temple, where priests of Neveya charted the cycles of the heavens.

Each day began with the world looking out across the immensity of the celestial Ocean that extended away to Neveya’s orb, dividing it equally like the plane of a blade halving a water-fruit so that only the upper hemisphere of Neveya was visible. Then the Ocean would rise, tilting and narrowing as it did so until it became an edge crossing past the world to reveal briefly all of Neveya’s countenance; from there, now above, it broadened again to expand its underside, at the same time obscuring Neveya’s upper part to reach its half-day low, after which it would fall and cross back again. This cycle repeated 5,623 times in the year that the stars took to turn through their constellations.