Savage Song: A Special Edition Destroyer Novella (The Destroyer)

Warren Murphy Author Warren Murphy's books and stories have sold 50 million copies worldwide and won a dozen national awards. He has created a number of book series, including the Trace series and the long-running satiric adventure, The Destroyer. Richard Ben Sapir worked as an editor and in public relations before creating the Destroyer series with Warren Murphy. Before his untimely death in , Sapir penned a number of thriller and historical mainstream novels. Kindle Edition File Size: Gere Donovan Press; 1. Share your thoughts with other customers.

Write a customer review. Showing of 1 reviews. Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. Most helpful customer reviews on Amazon. The movie and the limited number of the books I've read have been more enjoyable when there has been more interaction between Reno and Chiun.

This is lacking in this book. If you just want the sex and violence of any run of the mill assassin you should like the book. If you want more substance to the lead character try one of the other books in the series. Number 4 in the bag.

Mafia Fix (The Destroyer Book 4) eBook: Warren Murphy, Richard Sapir: www.newyorkethnicfood.com: Kindle Store

Good story, a little predictable but fun. I just enjoy simple stories and this one fits the bill. Another great book by Warren Murphy. The Destroyer series is a truly enjoyable read. They are ornamental in themselves. Here is the equivalent of the Doric column, the Egyptian pyramid, the Gothic cathedral, growing out of the ground, earnest, big with destiny.

If this lonely, desolate world can be regarded as a mother earth, then the land had a warm, a spiritual place in the hearts of the race. Abruptly, as if at this point culture had its Battle of Tours, and began to collapse like the ancient Mohammedan civilization. In the Chinese civilization that period occupied B.

This phase Egypt experienced between B. The classical experienced it from Chaeronea——and, at the pitch of horror, from the Gracchi——to Actium—31 B. The West European Americans were devastated by it in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and modern historians agree that, nominally, we entered the same phase fifty years ago: It is always a slow development; and the first step is a merciless questioning of all that was once held sacred. The skeptic becomes the highest type of being. Morton frowned at them thoughtfully, then said: Pussy comes from a period earlier than our own?

That is, we are entering the highly civilized era of our culture, while he became suddenly history-less in the most vigorous period of his. His may be the middle of the tenth civilization of his world: Like Siedel, I also have the impression that he was always around. I maintain pussy wanted something from that body.

It looks to be all there, but something must be missing. Kent carried a large, flat bowl in his hands; his tired eyes flashed across at Morton, and he said in a weary, yet harsh, voice: What have you got there? There are ways of getting phosphorus out of the human body. For instance, a quick way was what happened to the workman who helped build this ship.

He seems to control the vibrations at will. But set the bowl down. His reaction may tell us something. His ear tendrils instantly caught the id-vibrations from the contents of the bowl—and he gave it not even a second glance.

He recognized this two-legged being as the one who had held the weapon that morning. With a snarl, he floated to his feet. He caught the bowl with the finger-like appendages at the end of one looping tentacle, and emptied its contents into the face of Kent, who shrank back with a yell. He tossed the kicking Kent onto the nearest couch—and realized with a hiss of dismay that he should have disarmed the man.

Not that the gun was dangerous—but, as the man furiously wiped the gruel from his face with one hand, he reached with the other for his weapon. Coeurl crouched back as the gun was raised slowly and a white beam of flame was discharged at his massive head. His round, black eyes narrowed as he caught the movement of men reaching for their metalite guns. You deliberately tried to kill pussy, knowing that the majority of us are in favor of keeping him alive.

You know what our rule is: If the majority objects, my decisions are overruled. In this case, no one but you objected, and, therefore, your action in taking the law into your own hands is most reprehensible, and automatically debars you from voting for a year. What kind of men are we—fools, cynics, ghouls—or is it that our civilization is so steeped in reason that we can contemplate a murderer sympathetically? Now that we suspect him, we doubt his ability to trap any of us. He trotted docilely along as Morton unmistakably motioned him through a door he had not hitherto seen.

He found himself in a square, solid metal room. The door clanged metallically behind him; he felt the flow of power as the electric lock clicked home. His lips parted in a grimace of hate, as he realized the trap, but he gave no other outward reaction.

Vibrations poured upon him, and for just an instant he was startled. He leaped to his feet in pure terror—and then realized that the vibrations were vibrations, not atomic explosions. After a while the man went away, and for a long time there were noises of men doing things far away. That, too, died away slowly. In the long ago, before the dawn of immortality, the coeurls, too, had slept at night; and the memory of it had been revived the day before when he saw some of the men dozing.

The first one walked slowly past the cage door. Then about thirty feet behind him came the second. Coeurl sensed the alertness of these men; knew that he could never surprise either while they walked separately. It meant—he must be doubly careful! Fifteen minutes, and they came again. The moment they were past, he switched his senses from their vibrations to a vastly higher range. He felt the whisper of that flow through the wires in the walls of his cage, and through the electric lock of his door.

Suddenly, his ear tendrils vibrated in harmony—he caught the surging change into shrillness of that rippling force wave. There was a sharp click of metal on metal. With a gentle touch of one tentacle, Coeurl pushed open the door, and glided out into the dully gleaming corridor. For just a moment, he felt contempt, a glow of superiority, as he thought of the stupid creatures who dared to match their wit against a coeurl. And in that moment, he suddenly thought of other coeurls.

It stood half open. One swift flow of synchronized muscles, one swiftly lashing tentacle that caught the unresisting throat of the sleeping man, crushing it; and the lifeless head rolled crazily, the body twitched once. Seven bedrooms; seven dead men. They were not near—that was what brought wave after wave of fright swirling into the chaos that suddenly became his brain. In a moment, the first man would see the open door—and sound the alarm. He emerged into the next corridor, cringing in awful anticipation of the atomic flame he expected would stab into his face.

The two men were together, standing side by side. Like a fool the second had come running when he saw the other stop before the open door. They looked up, paralyzed, before the nightmare of claws and tentacles, the ferocious cat head and hate-filled eyes. That was his one hope. Shaking in every nerve and muscle, conscious of the terrible error he had made, unable to think coherently, he plunged into the cage.

The door clicked softly shut behind him. Power flowed once more through the electric lock. He crouched tensely, simulating sleep, as he heard the rush of many feet, caught the vibration of excited voices. He knew when somebody actuated the cage audioscope and looked in. A few moments now, and the other bodies would be discovered.

And Coulter and— Horrible! He looked up grimly, his heavy chin out-thrust as he stared into the stern faces that surrounded him. Men crowded aside to make way for him. The throats of these men have been squeezed to a jelly. No human being could have exerted such enormous strength without using a machine. Obviously heard the racket and— Man alive! I used the telefluor on him—you know the arrangement we have on top of the cage—and tried to take some pictures. Pussy jumped when the telefluor was turned on, as if he felt the vibrations. Blue fire flashed from the metal, and a bank of fuses above his head exploded with a single hang.

That wrecked the audios, too. At the worst we can open the door and ray him to death. A heavy body crashed against a wall, followed by a dull thump. What a fool he was to go back into that cage and does he realize it! He may come out of that door, rather than die like a rat in a trap. I thought I heard the elevator. Morton was flung to the floor with a violence that stunned him. He fought back to consciousness, aware of the other men lying all around him.

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The picture that flooded onto the screen brought a deep bellow to his lips: IT WAS Morton who first staggered across the salon floor to the supply room where the spacesuits were kept. It was Morton then who, after first looking into the cage, opened the door and stood, silent as the others crowded about him, to stare at the gaping hole in the rear wall. It would take at least a minute for an atomic disintegrator to do the job.

Morton, this is a super-being. The biologist looked up. We need a metallurgist to explain this. A piece crumbled in his finger and slithered away in a fine shower of dust to the floor. Morton noticed for the first time that there was a little pile of metallic debris and dust. The monster merely used his special powers to interfere with the electronic tensions holding the metal together.

Their anxiety was a tangible thing that lay heavily upon their faces: Pennons, detail five men to each of the four approaches to the engine room. Gear them to the master switch, and shut them off all at once. Kent, you take No. He spoke into the communicator: He can probably hear a pin drop. So just wheel up your units. But, aside from the possibility that we can destroy him immediately, I have a theory. During that period the monster will have no power. The mobile units throbbed; and then pure atomic flame ravened out and poured upon the hard metal of the door.

The second was more normal. It followed a shaky downward course. The third rolled sideways—for this was pure force, not subject to gravitation. Other drops followed until a dozen streams trickled sedately yet unevenly in every direction—streams of hellish, sparkling fire, bright as fairy gems, alive with the coruscating fury of atoms suddenly tortured, and running blindly, crazy with pain.

The minutes ate at time like a slow acid. At last Morton asked huskily: Boss, take a look at this. Leave two men guarding every corridor. The others come up to the control room. We know that of all the machines in the engine room, the most important to the monster was the electric dynamo. He must have worked in a frenzy of terror while we were at the doors. The noises sank to a steady vibration of throbbing power. Three hours later, Morton paced up and down before the men gathered in the salon.

When he spoke, his deep voice was crisp to the point of sharpness: He was not a big man. Morton thought, yet he looked big, perhaps because of his air of authority. This man knew engines and the history of engines. Morton had heard him trace a machine through its evolution from a simple toy to the highly complicated modern instrument.

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It was almost weird to hear Pennons, who could have spoken for a thousand hours and still only have touched upon his subject, say with absurd brevity: The trip lever will work a hundred times a second, and the effect will be to create vibrations of every description. Gourlay climbed lazily to his feet. He looked sleepy, as if he was somewhat bored by the whole proceedings— yet Morton knew he loved people to think him lazy, a good-for-nothing slouch, who spent his days in slumber and his nights catching forty winks.

His title was chief communication engineer, but his knowledge extended to every vibration field; and he was probably, with the possible exception of Kent, the fastest thinker on the ship. There must be a limit to his capacity for handling power with those insulated nerves of his. And that, Morton reflected, was the man. The commander thinks with Gunlie Lester that these creatures will know nothing about anti-acceleration.

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This would ascribe a virtual immortality to our enemy, a possibility that is borne out by his ability to breathe both oxygen and chlorine—or neither—but even that makes no difference. He bungled the mass murders a few hours ago. The forty-foot, cigar-shaped spaceship was nearly finished. Its interior, visible through the one aperture in the outer wall, was pitifully small. There was literally room for nothing but the engines—and a narrow space for himself.

There was no time to fit anything into place, no time for anything—no time—no time. The thought pounded at his reason. He felt strangely weary for the first time in his long and vigorous existence. He knew the doors were going down. Half a dozen disintegrators concentrating on one point were irresistibly, though slowly, eating away the remaining inches. With a gasp, he released his mind from the doors and concentrated every ounce of his mind on the yard-thick outer wall, toward which the blunt nose of his ship was pointing.

His body cringed from the surging power that flowed from the electric dynamo through his ear tendrils into that resisting wall. The whole inside of him felt on fire, and he knew that he was dangerously close to carrying his ultimate load. His massive head pointed as in dread fascination at that bitterly hard wall.

He heard one of the engine-room doors crash inward. Coeurl heard the floor of the engine room hiss in protest, as those beams of atomic energy tore everything in their path to bits. In a minute they would be at the flimsy doors separating the engine room from the machine shop. Suddenly, Coeurl was satisfied. With a snarl of hate, a vindictive glow of feral eyes, he ducked into his little craft, and pulled the metal plate down into place as if it was a hatchway.

In an instant, the plate was more than welded—it was part of his ship, a seamless, rivetless part of a whole that was solid opaque metal except for two transparent areas, one in the front, one in the rear.

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His tentacle embraced the power drive with almost sensuous tenderness. The nose of the forty-foot craft touched—and the wall dissolved in a glittering shower of dust. The men and the great ship grew smaller. Then the men were gone; and there was only the ship with its blaze of a thousand blurring portholes. Almost straight ahead, Coeurl saw a tiny, dim, reddish ball—his own sun, he realized. He headed toward it at full speed. There were caves where he could hide and with other coeurls build secretly a spaceship in which they could reach other planets safely—now that he knew how. His body ached from the agony of acceleration, yet he dared not let up for a single instant.