"Dave Duncan - Strings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Dave)

By Dave Duncan Published by Ballantine Books:
A ROSE-RED CITY
SHADOW
The Seventh Sword THE RELUCTANT SWORDSMAN THE COMING OF WISDOM THE DESTINY OF
THE SWORD
WEST OF JANUARY
STRINGS
I room,, 0"m I STRIN
Dave Duncan
A Del Rey Back
BALLANTINE BOOKS a NEW YORK
A Del Rey Book Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright Oc 1989 by D.J. Duncan
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States of America 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: 89-91890
ISBN 0-345-36191 -
Printed in Canpdi
First Edition: February 1990
Cover Art by Neal McPhecters
File name:
WINDOWS
28 March to 12 April, 2050
(Life-bearing worlds only)
Nile Orinoco Po Quinto Rhine Sask. Tiber Usk
March 28 * ? March 29 March 30 March 31 April I
* April 2 April 3 April 4 April 5 * April 6 April 7 April
8 April 9 * t April 10 April 11 April 12
i No, further investigation at ffiese coirimate
ACKNOWLEOGMENT
I am grateful to Shelagh Hislop for reading the manuscript and vetting my
biology. Any tangles in that particular string, though, are my fault and not
hers.
Cainsville, April 6
T@HERE SEEmED To be a window in the wall opposite the door, looking out at the
landscape beyond the dome. From time to time Wilkins would pause in his
restless pacing to stare at that view and shudder. There was no life out
there, only gaunt gray granite, forged by ancient fires, clawed into hills by
old ice sheets, and cauterized by deadly radiation. Even the misty rain
blowing out there was poison. If the Institute's planetologists stumbled on a
terrain like that anywhere else in the universe, they would slap a Class Four
label on it without a second's hesitation and go off to find a more
interesting world.
It was not a Class Four world, though, and had not always been quite so
barren. The poison rain was a soup of industrial by-products, still falling
from their long sojourn in the upper atmosphere. It was so murderously potent
on those siliceous hills that even the little gunmetal lakes held no life
anymore. The radiation was merely the normal ultraviolet of sunlight, because