"Mike Resnick - Velvet Comet 1 - Eros Ascending" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

EROS ASCENDING
Copyright ┬й 1984 by Mike Resnick
e-book ver. 1.0




To Carol, as always,
And to Hank and Martha Beck,
For cherished memories, past and future.




PROLOGUE


The Velvet Comet spun slowly in space, resembling nothing more than a giant barbell. Its metal skin
glistened a brilliant silver, and its array of flashing lights could be seen from literally tens of thousands
of miles away.

It orbited about the planet Charlemagne, a tepid green-and-blue world that was barely visible beneath a
layer of swirling white clouds, but it was owned by the Vainmill Syndicate on the distant world of
Deluros VIII. Seventeen different engineering firms had worked on its design, thousands of men and
machines had spent literally millions of hours on its construction, and it housed a permanent staff of
more than six hundred men and women.

During its brief twelve years of existence it had become a byword for opulence and elegance, a
synonym for hedonism and dissipation. Its fame quickly spread throughout the worlds of the Republic,
and while its Sybaritic luxuries and even its air of exclusivity were often imitated, they were never
equaled.

The Velvet Comet, after more than three decades of gestation, had been born in space, and less than a
century after its birth it would die in space, mourned by few and forgotten by most. But in the
meantime, it did its living with a grace and style that would not be seen again for many millennia.

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

And it was the brothel, and the promises of secret delights that it proffered, that enticed its select
clientele out to the Comet. They came at first by the dozens, then the hundreds, and eventually from
both nearby and distant worlds. Money was no object to these men and women; they came to play, and
to relax, and to indulge.

All except one man. His name was Harry Redwine, and he had come to do a job.
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