"Chalker, Jack L - Four Lords 4 - Medusa" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

Medusa





Medusa:A Tiger by the Tail

A Del Rey Book

Published by Ballantine Books

Copyright й 1983 by Jack L. Chalker

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc. New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 82-90893

ISBN 0-345-29372-X

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition: April 1983 Second Printing: April 1983 Cover art by David B. Mattingly

For Walt Liebscher, the elfish Puck of science fiction for over forty years. Those who haven't met him or read him have been missing something unique and wonderful.





PROLOGUE:

Beginning of the End Game







There is nothing quite like the sensation of calling your worst enemy up for a friendly little chat. The face appeared on the little screen, although such communication often dispensed with visuals. In this case, both sides were curious to see what the other looked like.

He looked at the face on that screen and understood immediately why everyone who had seen it feared it. It was the handsome face of a man in middle age, trim, lean, and somewhat military, but the eyes got you right away^ They seemed hollowed, like a skull's eyes, yet not empty -- they burned with an undefinable something that seemed both eerie and impossible.

"Yatek Morah here," said the man with the strange eyes. "Who are you and why do you demand to speak to me?"

The man on the other end gave a slight smile. He was on a huge floating city in space, a picket ship and base camp for those who guarded the four prison worlds of the Warden Diamond, a third of a light-year out and beyond the range of the Warden's own peculiar weapons. "I think you know who I am," he told Morah.

The strange man's brow furrowed a bit in puzzlement, but, suddenly, he nodded and gave a slight smile of his own. "So the puppet master is finally out in the open."