"Henry Kuttner - The Well of the Worlds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

file:///F|/rah/Henry%20Kuttner/Kuttner%20-%20The%20Well%20of%20the%20Worlds%20UC.txt

HENRY KUTTNER

Novels

Available In Ace Books:

VALLEY OF THE FLAME (F-297) EARTH'S LAST CITADEL (F-306) THE DARK WORLD (F-327)

THE WELL OF THE WORLDS

HENRY KUTTNER

ACE BOOKS, INC.

1120 Avenue of the Americas

New York, N.Y. 10036

THE WELL OF THE WORLDS

Copyright, 1952, by Better Publications, Inc.

An Ace Book, by arrangement with The Estate of Henry Kuttner

All Rights Reserved

Cover by Alex Schomburg.

I

W-J UTSIDE the hotel window Clifford Sawyer could see the lights of Fortuna burning in the Pole's
noonday darkness along all the plank paths of the little mining camp, glowing blue in the hospital
windows, shining yellow in bunk houses and offices. He couldn't see the mine, of course, from
here, but he could feel it. That deep, steady, almost sub-sensory whumpтАФwhumpтАФwhump had never
stopped, day or night, for seventeen years now, since the mine was first opened in 1953. A great
many people wanted uranium ore. The government needed its share, too, and the pumps never stopped,
down under the frozen cap of the world.

Reflected in the glass, he saw the girl behind him stir impatiently. He turned his gaze back
toward her, thinking that he had never seen eyes quite the shape and color of Klai Ford's. There
was a touch of exoticism about her which he had been trying in vain to place, remembering what he
had read yesterday in the files of the Royal Atomic Energy Commission, back in Toronto, about the
curious background of this girl who had inherited half a uranium mine a few months ago.

Printed in U.S.A.

She had smooth, caramel-colored hair. Her brow was bland and her eyes round, confiding and a
singularly deep blue. Sawyer liked the way her front teeth stuck out ever so slightly, in an