"Foster, Alan Dean - Damned 2 - The False Mirror" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

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A Del Reyо Book
Published by Ballantine Books

Copyright й 1992 by Thranx, Inc.
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.

http://www.randomhouse.com

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 91-73136

ISBN 0-345-37575-0

Printed in Canada

First Hardcover Edition: April 1992
First Mass Market Edition: June 1993
10 9 8 7
Cover by ?
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For Harry E. Fischer,
Able-bodied seaman and fellow voyager.
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Chapter One

By the time he was twelve years old, Ranji knew he liked to kill. His parents,
naturally, encouraged him.
By the tinge of the Trials he had added four years of experience, education, and
maturity to a great deal of additional height, weight, and strength. With these
came confidence in his abilities, a soft-spoken assurance much admired and
valued by the rest of the soldier-trainees in his age group.
There was no jealousy among them, that being an alien concept shared by the
multitude of monsters whose ultimate goal was the destruction of civilization.
Why would anyone be jealous of him? Were they not all striving for the sane end,
seeking enthusiastically the same results? Achievement among friends was to be
applauded, not enнvied. Who would not wish to have a soldier more skilled in the
arts of combat than oneself fighting on his flank?
So each trainee strove to outdo his or her competitors while simultaneously
urging them to greater achievement.
Until the monsters arrived on the scene, civilization had been advancing
steadily across the cosmos, spreading organization where hitherto had been only
chaos. The pace had been slow but gratifyingly inexorable. Occasional setbacks
were accepted and taken in stride until ground lost could, as it inevitably was,