"Kevin O'Donnel Jr. - The Journeys of McGill Feighan 01 - Caverns" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Donnell Jr Kevin)

Their advice and support made all the difference.


To Margaret Ann O'Donnell,
who taught me to speak, to read, to write,
and to dare to do all three well,
I dedicate this book with love.




Chapter I
^┬╗
Despite the arrow-tipped winter winds, the giant gastropod form-flowed out
of sheer enjoyment. On its home planet, in weather like this, it would be
hibernating, but here the food supply didn't hide from the cold. What
wonderful availability! Even halfway to the rocky island, it could break a
tendril through the ice and pull seaweed from the bottom. Delicious!
It had no idea why the Far Being Retzglaran had sent it on its journey,
but it didn't regret not asking for an explanation (its master being
notoriously unable to abide inquisitive courtiers). Not that it cared. From
budhood it had wanted to travel to the pinpricks of light that burst through
the night sky, and now it had the opportunity.
Much opportunity, in fact, for the Far Being had sponsored a Galactic
Grand Tour. Thirty-eight planets, so far, and the thirty-ninth was coming
up, a new net node called Sol III. What an excursion! Twenty-six local days
wandering in the undeveloped hinterlands of each planet, looking, smelling,
nibbling on the local flora (unless the guidebooks said it was intelligent), and
finding intimacy with the earth. It bore no responsibilities, except on the
thirty-ninth planet, where a detailed schedule had been arranged. The
itinerary was strange indeed, but the gastropod was not one to question a
benefactor. After all, it wasn't paying for this trip, and if the Far Being
wanted it to run an errand on the side, well, that was fine and dandy, no
problem, no problem.
Snow crunched and compressed as it oozed up the ramp to the Customs
Building, where a bored functionary coded its passchip and reminded it to
change its local currency into FNC's before it left. Throngorn II money was
valueless anywhere but T-II itself. Even there, most natives ignored it,
preferring to trade in the decorated shells they'd trusted for millennia.
Once inside the spacious Flinger Building, it swallowed its passchip into
the appropriate stomach, searched out the second most recently activated
file, and erased the visa from Delurc, its previous stopover. Just as its master
had ordered.
The authorities thought civilians couldn't alter the card-sized passchips,
for one entered date into them by realigning the molecular structure of their
visa-files, but the authorities hadn't taken into account sentient metallurgical
laboratories that could work on the subatomic level.
Exuding puffs of diluted fluorocarbons, it slithered to the Ticket Booth, a
lashed-together grillwork of polished sticks. There sat a furry, big-eared
Trainee Flinger, proud of her lustrous tunic. The gastropod squashed itself