"Andre Norton - Ross Murdock 04 - Key Out Of Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

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| File name : Andre Norton - [Ross Murdock 04] - Key Out Of Time.txt |
| File size : 328,198 bytes (approx) |
| Create date : 28-Oct-2004 |
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Key Out of Time
1
Lotus World
There was a shading of rose in the pearl arch of sky, deepening to a rainbow
tint of cloud. The lazy swells of the ocean held the same soft color,
darkened with crimson veins where spirals of weed drifted. A rose world
bathed in soft sunlight, knowing only gentle winds, peace, and--sloth. Ross
Murdock leaned forward over the edge of the rock ledge to peer down at a
beach of fine sand, pale pink sand. Here and there sparkled the glitter of
crystalline shells--or were those fluted ovals shells? Even the waves came
in languidly. And the breeze which ruffled his hair and caressed his
sun-browned, half-bare body, lightly stirred the growths which the Terran
settlers called "trees" but which possessed long lacy fronds instead of true
branches. Hawaika--named for the old Polynesian paradise--a world seemingly
without flaw except the subtle one of being too perfect, too welcoming, too
wooing. Its long, uneventful, unchanging days enticed forgetfulness, offered
a life without effort. Except for the mystery . . . Because this world was
not the one pictured on the tape which had brought the human settlement team
here. A map, a directing guide, a description all in one, that was the
ancient voyage tape. Ross himself had helped to loot a storehouse on an
unknown planet for a cargo of such tapes. Once they had been the
space-navigation guides for a race or races who had ruled the star lanes ten
thousand years ago in his own world's past, a civilization which had long
since sunk back into dust. Those tapes returned to Earth after their chance
discovery, were studied, probed, deciphered by the best brains of his time,
shared out by lot between already suspicious global powers, bringing into
the exploration of space bitter rivalries and old hatreds. Such a tape had
landed their ship on Hawaika, a world of shallow seas and archipelagoes
instead of true continents. The settlement team had had all the knowledge
contained on that tape crowded into them, only to discover that much they
had learned from it was false! Of course, none of them had expected to
discover the cities or the civilization the tape had projected as existing
in that long-ago period. But no present island string that they had visited
approximated those on the maps they had seen, and so far they had not found
any trace that any intelligent beings had walked, built, or lived on these
beautiful, slumberous atolls. So, what had happened to the Hawaika of the
tape? Ross's right hand rubbed across the ridged scars which disfigured his
left one, to be carried for the rest of his life as a mark of his meeting