"01 - Midnight at the Well of Souls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

Midnight at the Well of SoulsMidnight at the Well of Souls
On "Earth," a Planet Circling a Star

Near the Outermost Edge of the Galaxy

Andromeda
Paradise, Once Called Dedalus, a Planet

Near Sirius

On the FrontierЧHarvich's World
Aboard the Freighter Stehekin

Dalgonia

MASS MURDERS ARE USUALLY ALL THE MORE SHOCK-

ing because of the unexpected settings and the past
character of the murderer. The Dalgonian Massacre
is a case in point.

Dalgonia is a barren, rocky planet near a dying sun,
bathed only in a ghostly, reddish light, whose beauti-
ful rays create sinister shadows across the rocky crags.
Little is left of the Dalgonian atmosphere to suggest
that life could ever have happened here; the water is
gone or, like the oxygen, now locked deep in rock. The
feeble sun, unable to give more than the deep reddish
tint to the landscape, is of no help in illuminating the
skyline, which was, despite a bluish haze from the in-
ert elements still present in it, as dark as the shadows.
This was a world of ghosts.

And it was haunted.

Nine figures trooped silently into the ruins of a city
that might easily have been mistaken for the 'rocky
. crags on the nearby hills. Twisted spires and crumbling
castles of greenish-brown stood before them, dwarf-
ing them to insignificance. Their white protective suits
were all that made them conspicuous in this darkly
beautiful world of silence.

The city itself resembled nothing so much as one
that might have been built of iron aeons before and
subjected to extensive rust and salt abrasion in some
dead sea. Like its world, it was silent and dead.

A close look at the figures heading into the city
would reveal that they were all what was known as