"Alan Dean Foster - Humanx 1 - Midworld" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

positioned, Bom would move directly down until he
could push it off. Neither of them wished to descend
after a tumbling carcass to unpredictable depths, to

levels unknown.

There were seven levels to the forest world. Man-
kind, the persons, preferred this, the Third. So did the
furcots. Two levels rose above this one, to a sun-
bleached green roof and the Upper Hell. Four lay
below, the Seventh and deepest being the Lower and
True Hell, over four hundred and fifty meters below

the Home.

Many men had seen the Upper Hell. Bom had seen
it three times and lived. But only two legendary fig-
ures had ever made their way to the Lower. To the
surface. To the perpetually dark swamp, a moist land
of vast open pits and mindless abominations that
crawled and swam and ate.


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Or so they had claimed. The first had not been
of whole mind when he returned and had died soon
after. The second had returned with several important
parts of himself gone, but had confirmed the ravings
of his companion, though he, too, screamed almost
every night.

Not even the furcots, hunting back through ancestral
memories, could tell of one of their kind who had ever
descended below the Sixth Level. It was a place to
be shunned. Understandable, then, that neither man
nor companion desired to go hunting there for fallen

prey.
Ruumahum appeared beneath the grazer and

growled. Born shouted an answer and started down.
The grazer was still hanging from the branch when
he reached it, but a single shove was enough to dis-
lodge it. Bracing himself, Ruumahum dug the claws
of rear and middle legs into the hard wood of the
cubble. Reaching out slightly, he slammed both fore-
paws, either of which could crush a man's skull