Description of the Kurii Ships

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"Suddenly the Kur stopped, and stood, leaning against the wind. I opened my eyes, and saw, briefly, before me, not more than a hundred yards away, in a fleeting gap in the storm, swiftly closed again by the hastened, stinging sand, crooked, leaning to one side, half buried in the sand, a cylinder of steel, it was perhaps twelve feet in diameter, perhaps forty feet of it exposed; at its apex I saw clustered thrust chambers; it was a ship; it had been crashed into the sand." --------------------"It seemed to me of primitive design. The thurst chambers suggested a liquid-propellant rocket. It was not disklike. I supposed it might have been an obsolete ship, perhaps a derelict, even an ancient ship, little more now than the fuselage for housing a bomb. I shuddered when I thought of the power concealed in that casing of steel. ------------------- It was a weapon, pressed to the temple of a world, set to be discharged with the falling of darkness. ------------He thus led me to the portal. He reached it before I did. He scrambled, claws slipping on the leaning steel, and then crouched in it. The opening must once have been the outer opening of a lock; it was rectangular; the exterior hatch was missing; there was twisted metal at the side of the opening, as though it had been wrenched away from rusted highes; the beast crouched in the lock, perering into the storm. Then it disappeared within.-------------- I dropped into the darkness of the ship. It was empty. The Kur howled with rage. I fell, dropping, striking objects, sliding for perhaps forty or fifty feet, until stopped by a compartment wall. I looked up. The interior of the ship was suddenly illuminated. In the cylinder above me, in the portal, his paw at the disk, stood the Kur. He looked down at me. His lips drew back. He had discarded the weapon. I looked about myself, wildly. The interior of the ship, given its attitude, seemed oddly askew. Beyond this it was not as compact as I would have expected, as filled with devices, panels, and storage cabinets. It had been muchly stripped, apparently, presumably to lighten it.. I saw the Kur easily, gracefully for its bulk, with its long arms, pipe to pipe, swing down toward me. (Tribesmen of Gor)"

"I remembered the timing devices in the crashed ship encountered in the Tahari desert, devices set to control the detonation of the fearsome explosives housed within its steel hull. They had been calibrated into twelvefold divisions. I speculated that they might be indexed to the periods of revolution and rotation of the Kurii's original world. Also, I suppose the twelvefold division may have some remote relation to the base-twelve mathematics utilized by the Kurii, itself perhaps a function of the six-digited paw. The complex, then, that in which I was prisoner, I conjectured, might well have a clock similar to those used on Kur ships, and in the distant steel worlds, a clock doubtless once developed for use on their former world, doubtless long since destroyed in their internecine wars. "We can tell the morning from the night by the illumination in the complex," said Constance. "It seems to be controlled by some sort of device which regulates its intensity." I supposed that it would not be difficult to arrage a rheostatic mechanism to control the degree of illumination. The mechanism, I conjectured, would be analogized to the waxing and waning of light on a native world." (Beasts of Gor)

"Then, on the steel ships," I said, "the killings, and the fierce matings, no longer take place." The animal, at the opened cabinet, turned to regard me. "I did not say that," he said. "The killings and the matings then continue to take place on the steel worlds?" I asked. "Of course," he said. "The past, then, is still with you on the steel worlds," I said. "Yes," it said. "Is the past not always with us?" (Beasts of Gor, Chapter 31)

(the following quote speaks of the vast complex at the polar north of Gor, commanded by Zarendargar, or Half-Ear. It is included here because it brings to light some of the technology that would have also been upon the ships of the Kurii)

"The supplies here, and the disposition maps, the schedules and codes, will not fall into the hands of Priest-Kings," it said. It looked at me. "There are two switches on this mechanism," it said. It lifted the mechanism. There were indeed two switches on the mechanism. "When I depress either switch," it said, not taking its eyes from me, "a twofold, irreversible sequence is initiated. First, a signal is transmitted from the complex to the steel worlds. This signal, which can also be received by the probe ships and the fleet, will inform them of the destruction of the complex, the loss of these munitions and supplies." "The second portion of the sequence, simultaneously initiated, triggers the destruction of the complex," I said. "Of course," he said." (Beasts of Gor, Chapter 35)