THE GREEN ODYSSEY by Philip José Farmer Make friends fast. --_Handbook For The Shipwrecked_ Ballantine Books New York Copyright 1957, by Philip José Farmer Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 57-10603 Printed in the United States of America BALLANTINE BOOKS, INC. 101 Fifth Avenue, New York 3, N. Y. [Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] This is an original novel--not a reprint--published BY BALLANTINE BOOKS, INC. To Nan Gerding DANGER! THRILLS! ADVENTURE! Alan Green was not exactly a hero. In fact he liked peace just as well as the next man. Not that he was really afraid of that crazy, hot-blooded hound-dog Alzo, or even of the hound's gorgeous owner, the Duchess Zuni--who was also hot-blooded (to say nothing of the Duke). After all, these things were understood on this backward, violent planet, and a man could manage, provided he was alert twenty-four hours a day. And as a matter of fact, Alan was only normally apprehensive of his Junoesque, tempestuous (but altogether lovable) wife Amra. Delightful, demanding Amra--and her five uproarious kids. The trouble was, he was tired. And homesick. So when he heard of two other downed spacemen, he hitched a ride with a piratical merchant-captain on a windroller destined to carry him to the spaceship and thence to the peaceful green hills of Earth. But he had reckoned without the vagaries of the windroller, pirates, the "traveling islands," the rascally Captain, and various flora and fauna peculiar to this planet--all of which, it now seemed, regarded Alan with unnerving malevolence. And worst of all, Amra was determined that he should be a hero. Amra won. 1 For two years Alan Green had lived without hope. From the day the spaceship had crashed on this unknown planet he had resigned himself to the destiny created for him by accident and mathematics. Chances against another ship landing within the next hundred years were a million to one. Therefore it would do no good to sit around waiting for rescue. Much as he loathed the idea, he must live the rest of his life here, and he must squeeze as much blood as he could out of this planet-sized turnip. There wasn't much to squeeze. In fact, it seemed to him that he was the one losing the blood. Shortly after he'd been cast away he'd been made a slave. Now, suddenly, he had hope.