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

"human"Чdenizens of the youngest part of the spiral
arm of their galaxy. Five were female, four male, the

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leader a thin, frail man of middle years. Stenciled on
his back and faceplate was the name Skander.

They stood at the half-crumbled gate to the city as
they had so many times before, gazing at the incred-
ible but magnificent ruin.

My name is Ozymandias.
Look on my works ye mighty,

and despair!
Nothing beside remains....

If those words from a poet out of their near-
forgotten past did not actually echo through each of
them, the concept and feeling of those lines did. And
through each mind, as they had through the minds of
thousands of others who had peered and pecked
through similar ruins on over two dozen other dead
planets, those endless and apparently unanswerable
questions kept running.

Who were they who could build with such magnifi-
cence?

Why did they die?

"Since this is your first trip as graduate students to
a Markovian ruin," Skander's reedy voice said through
their radios, startling them out of their awe, "I will give
a brief introduction to you. I apologize if I am redun-
dant, but this will be a good refresher nonetheless.

"Jared Markov discovered the first of these ruins
centuries ago, on a planet over a hundred light-years
distant from this spot. It was our race's first experience
with signs of intelligence in this galaxy of ours, and the
discovery caused a tremendous amount of excitement.
Those ruins were dated at over a quarter of a million
standard years oldЧand they were the youngest dis-
covered to date. It became obvious that, while our race
still grubbed on its home world fiddling with the new
discovery of fire, someone elseЧthese peopleЧhad a
vast interstellar empire of still unknown dimensions.
All we know is that as we have pressed inward in the