Ellis Asteroid is Earth's long-abandoned naturalization station for extraterrestrial refugees - her bounteous hub walled off by arrogant human administrators, her ignorant non-human population left to rot in the wilds.
Bursting with backstabbers, man-eating cockroaches, and bloodsucking maters, Elis Royd is a fascinating sci-fi adventure from a master storyteller. For thinking readers only.
Excerpt:
Beppo took his time on the final grade. He had to: his hooves were split and bleeding, his back aching and stiff. And his little rhia Gwendahis life-and soul mate, his constant companiontrembled and wheezed as she hiked. A trillion stars loomed on the horizon, but they weren't the night's visual attraction. What drew Beppo was a burnt gold to deep blue gradienta heat aura lying like a mushroom's cap just beyond this last weedy hill. At the summit they dropped in a heap. Far below stretched Earth Administration, the gleaming nerve center of Elis Roydthirty square miles of glorious artificial light, flue-vented blossoms of regenerated heat, and great fans for stirring the ever-dead airall run by a miniature subterranean atomic power plant. According to folklore, the gates, walls, and fences of Earth Administrationknown by the local species as EarthAdconcealed soft beds, clean water, and delicacies light years-beyond the simple imaginations of Elis Royd's long-rotting applicants.
Beppo unhitched Gwenda's little wood cart. "See, my Gwenny? It is as I told you. No more hedgeroots and kunckleberries for us. We will eat as Earthmen, and for once we will recline in comfort." The rhia's left foreleg was shaking so badly Beppo had to squeeze it between his paws. "We will rest now, girl." He pulled out his homemade wartroot flute and blew a crude four-note melody, watching dreamily as twilight quickly gave way to darkness along the asteroid's craggy rim.