"Frank Herbert - Destination Void 4 The Ascenscion Factor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

knees like a kilt. The glitter of the hooks, as well as the smell of his blood, would attract the
dasher that would kill him.

Jephtha had caught thousands of maki on hooks like these, set tens of thousands of these ganions
on hundreds of longlines. Most of them hung free now, clinking with his movements or the rare
morning breeze. His weight hung from two dozen of them -- twelve puncturing the skin of his
chest, and twelve through his back. He thought this had a significance, too, but they had not
told him what it was. But they had told him what he'd wanted to know for years.

The Shadows are real! Jephtha played the thought over and over. The Shadows are real!

Everyone had heard about these Shadows, but no one he knew had ever met one. Now in the last few
months had come the mysterious broadcasts that came on the holo or the telly or the radio made by
"Shadowbox." Everybody said those were the work of the Shadows. There were stories in every
village about their fight to depose the Director, Raja Flattery, and hamstring his hired muscle.
The Nightly News reported daily on Shadow activities: detoured supplies, food theft, sabotage.
Anything unpopular or harmful to the Director's cause was laid at the Shadows' hatch, including
natural disasters. "Shadowbox," using pirated air space and great expertise, reported on the
Director.

Jephtha had whispered around many a hatchway trying to join up with the Shadows, but no word came
forward. "Shadowbox" had given him enough hope that he had set out to strike his own blow. He
understood, now, that this was how the Shadows worked.

He'd wanted to destroy the seat of power itself -- the main electrical station between the
Director's private compound and the sprawling manufacturing settlement adjacent to it, Kalaloch.

The power station that Jephtha chose was a hydrogen retrieval plant that supplied hydrogen, oxygen


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and electricity to all of the subcontractors in the Director's space program. Blowing the plant
would set Flattery's precious Project Voidship and his orbiting factory on its heels for a while.
The poor of the town were used to doing without, Jephtha reasoned. Thousands didn't even have
electricity. It would be this new Voidship project and Flattery who would be most crippled. He
should have known that the Director's security had already thought of that.

The interrogation had been very old-fashioned, as most of them were. He'd been caught easily and
forced to stand naked under a hood for three days while being tortured for nothing. Now a host of
steel snaffles clinked against hooks whenever any of his muscles moved. His wounds, for the most
part, had stopped bleeding. That just made the flies sting him more. Two poisonous flatwings
crawled his left leg, fluttering their wings in some ritual dance, but neither bit.

Dashers, he prayed. If it's anything, let it be dashers and quick. That was what they'd hung him
out there for -- dasher bait. The hooded dasher would strike him hard, as is their habit, then it
would get hung up on the maki hooks and snare itself. The hide would bring a pretty price in the
village market. It was an amusement to the security guards, and he'd heard them planning to split
the change they'd get for the hide. He didn't want to be nibbled to death, a dasher would