"Kate Wilhelm - Dark Door" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

solved the problems your probe has revealed. Because the good you have brought
to your own race is overshadowed by the evil that you may have brought to
other life forms, it is the decision of this review panel that you must
complete the project you have begun. Until the lights of the probe fade, you
will monitor them, for however long the probe continues to exist."

Krfs own lights dimmed and flickered. "May I," he asked in a low voice,
"continue to work on the probe in order to try to solve this mystery?"

"Yes, Associate Kri. That is the only task you will have for as long as it
exists."

The cylinder emerged from interspace in the star system of a primary with five
satellites. One by one it orbited the satellites until it found life. When it
completed its examination of the planet, it left behind a trail of
destruction---death and madness. Associate Kri prayed to the intelligence tlat
ruled all life to destroy it, but the fountain of many lights remained
undiminished; the blackness at its heart continued. It did not respond to
shadowing of the destruet panel; it did not send any messages.

On the planet Earth fur-clad hunters pursued shaggy mastodons across the ice
sheets to the steppes beyond, and some kept going south, always south. They
came in waves, seeking better hunting, more hospitable territory, and then the
ice crashed into the sea, and the retreat vanished.

In time, Kri people launched an interspace starship, then another, and
another. Some of them even searched for the tiny cylinder, but they could not
find it in the immensity of space. Kri continued to monitor the fountain of
lights with the blackness of evil at its core. He knew exactly when it emerged
from interspace, when it reentered. He could not know what it did in the
intervals. He no longer saw the multihued lights; all he could see was the
blackness, the dark door of evil.

Chapter

June 1979. Carson Danvers knew he was being overly cautious, getting insurance
quotes for all four places he was considering, but he had time, and it was
better to be cautious before the fact than have cause for regrets afterward.
Although River House was fourth on his list, he and Elinor had already decided
this was the one they really wanted. Half an hour out of Washington, D.C.,
through lush countryside with gentle hills and woods, a tiny village a few
miles past the inn, it was perfect. He would keep the name, he had already
decided. River House, a fine gourmet restaurant for the discriminating. He
glanced at Elinor's profile, caught the suggestion of a smile on her lips, and
felt his own grin broaden. In the back seat his son Gary chatted easily with
John Loesser. Gary was seventeen, ready for Yale in the fall; it was time to
make the change if they were ever to do it. He suppressed the urge to laugh
and sing; John Loesser would never understand. Carson pulled off the Virginia
state road onto a winding blacktop driveway and slowed down to navigate the
curves, several of them before the old inn came into sight. The grounds were