Re the KKK connection As I recall Napier forms a rebel group known as the Soldiers of Liberty but to maintain their cover they only speak the initials of the organization I don t recall if we re told the Amtorian word for soldier but we do know that in their universal language plurals are formed by adding a prefix either kloo or kl depending upon whether the root word begins with a consonant or a vowel We do learn that the Amtorian for of is kum Therefore liberty must either be a plural concept or must begin with a k anyawy So the group is named the Kl something kum K something initials K K K We re told that s spoken kung kung kung on Venus rather than kay kay kay by the kay er way Wait a minute on this basis wouldn t just about every Amtorian organization have at least two K s in their initials Wouldn t the K K K get confused with the K K P and the K K S K and all the others Hell of a way to carry on covert operations Sounds like that Monty Python bit about the Judean People s Front versus the People s Front of Judea and the other splitters What You re from the kung kung kung How dare you No I said kung kung bung Ergo it would be pretty stupid to use actual initials given a language that uses kl before every plural noun Such a language ought to sound pretty awful and to initiate choking in the speaker whenever a long passage is spoken but never mind If a language expert like Tolkein had pulled something like this you might infer a sinister motivation but Burroughs never let logic get in the way of entertainment and this served him and his readers quite well Napier smiles in amusement when his organization is rendered as K K K Given my explanation he should have laughed out loud That s hardly a political endorsement Pursuing that track is S O L and that ain t Soldiers of Liberty 05 46 3 August 2010 UTC