"E. E. Doc Smith - D' Alembert 2 - Stranglers Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

STRANGLERS' MOON

Volume Two of The classic Family d'Alembert series

By E.E. тАШDoc' Smith
With Stephen Goldin

CHAPTER 1
Predators and Prey

The Golden Crater Casino was unquestionably among the largest and plushest
gaming
palaces in the Galaxy. Its reputation for the exotic and the exciting was
fully earned, as
the briefest of walks down its crowded corridors and across its even more
crowded
rooms would reveal. People were jammed elbow-to-elbow in some places in their
fanatical attempts to lose money to the House. Women in abbreviated costumes
roamed
the floor, ostensibly employed as photographers, waitresses and the like-
though it was
common knowledge that a fifty ruble bill would procure other services from
them as well.

The great and the near-great mingled at the tables, amid throngs of those who
were
merely wealthy but had aspirations toward greatness. Here a sensable star
brushed
against a countess; there a corporation president bumped into a famous news
commentator. Rank and social distinction were of little importance in the
casino; the only
question of interest was how well could a person gamble and was luck on his
side today.

Yet even as notorious and plush as it was, the Golden Crater was considered
merely
routine by comparison to other "establishments" on Vesa, the moon that billed
itself as
the "Playground to the Galaxy"-and which cynics called a variety of other
names.

Nils Bjenden, a banker from the planet Lindstrom, stood to one side of a
doorway looking
with distaste across the crowded room. This chamber was so jammed with people
that
he had difficulty seeing the other side. The ceiling arched high above his
head, and on it
was projected a kaleidoscopic light show that continually changed colors with
the
changing noise level in the room. But he had not come here to look at the