Forty Thousand In Gehenna

Description for FORTY THOUSAND IN GEHENNA by C J Cherryh:

Quietly they have boarded the US Venture---452 born-men and 42, 363 cloned workers, known as azi. Their mission, shrouded in deep secrecy, is a bold political move by the Union in its continuing conflict with the merchanter Alliance. For the Union aims to colonize worlds on the very edge of Alliance space, and , in so doing, force the Alliance to expend its resources in an effort to evict them. Thus might all-out war be averted. At least, that is the plan...

Aboard the Venture, mission commander Colonel James Conn watches their destination grow larger in the viewer. Gehenna II was chosen both for its location and its relative habitability. It holds, for the human colonists, the promise of a whole new world, with no real predators to speak of and with any threat from the Alliance perhaps generations away. Atop the food chain stand huge but harmless dinosaur-like beasts called calibans and their small, lizard-sized counterparts, the Ariels. Both are fish-eaters, both apparently unintelligent. The calibans seem occupied in building huge mounds of no apparent design or purpose. The frisky ariels dart about building small mounds of stones.

As they prepare to land, Conn's mind is filled with the details of colonization---dome construction, power hookup, meetings. For now, they'll ignore the inscrutable behavior of the mound-builders, with whom they hope to coexist peacefully.

Yet there is something about them that cannot be ignored, something that will steer born-men and azi far from their initial aspirations. The secret of the mound-builders will change Gehenna and its inhabitants forever. And it will create a mystery non-Gehennans may never solve.