"Mike Resnick - Eros Nadir" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

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Copyright ┬й1986 by Mike Resnick
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PROLOGUE
TheVelvet Comet spun slowly in space, resembling nothing more than a giant barbell.

Once its metal skin had glistened a brilliant silver, and its array of flashing lights could be seen from
literally tens of thousands of miles away.

Seventeen different engineering firms had worked on its design, thousands of men and machines had
spent millions of hours on its construction, and in its heyday it had housed a permanent staff of more than
six hundred men and women.

Owned and financed by the Vainmill Syndicate, the largest of the Republic's conglomerates, it had been
built in orbit around the distant planet of Charlemagne, but now it circled Deluros VIII, the huge world
that would someday become the capital planet of the race of Man.

During its lifetime it had become a byword for opulence and elegance, a synonym for hedonism and
dissipation. Its fame had spread to the most remote worlds of the Republic, and while its sybaritic
luxuries and even its air of exclusivity had often been imitated, they had never been equaled.

TheVelvet Comet , after more than three decades of gestation, had been born in space, and almost
ninety-three years to the day after its birth it had died in space, mourned by few and forgotten by
mostтАФbut during its glory years it had done its living with a grace and style that would not be seen again
for many millennia.

It had been the crown jewel in the Syndicate's Entertainment and Leisure Division, a showplace where
the rich and the famousтАФand occasionally the notoriousтАФgathered to see and be seen, to conspicuously
consume, and to revel in pleasures which had been designed to satisfy even the most jaded of tastes. For
while theVelvet Comet had housed a compendium of the finest shops and boutiques, of gourmet
restaurants and elegant lounges, while it had boasted a fabulous casino and a score of other
entertainments, it had been first and foremost a brothel.

And it was the brothel, and the promises of secret delights that it proffered, that had enticed its select
clientele out to theComet . They had come from Deluros VIII and a thousand nearby and distant worlds.
Money was no object to these men and women; they had come to play, and to relax, and to indulge.

And now, almost a quarter of a century after the last song had been sung and the last dance had been
danced, the dead ship that had been theComet beckoned from the grave to one last visitor.

As they approached their destination, Page noticed that the shops were lit up, their windows filled with
exotic goods from all over the galaxy, their interiors bustling with activity.

тАЬWhat's going on here?тАЭ he asked his driver. тАЬI thought the whole place was shut down.тАЭ