"Jack Williamson - Eldren 2 - Mazeway" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williamson Jack)

MAZEWAY
Jack Williamson
Copyright ┬й 1990 by Jack Williamson
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 89-37936
ISBN 0-345-36936-X
Cover Art by Don Dixon
e-book ver. 1.0




When the all-cutting blade
Meets the uncuttable stone . . .
Can you guess the consequence?
тАФan ancient red delver riddle



1
The Game of Blade and Stone
"Dad, when can we go home?"
"The halo is our home, Benn." His father frowned. "We must earn our right to stay here."
They were jogging together in the squirrel cage. That was an odd name for it, Benn thought, because
there were no squirrels in the halo. Squirrels from old Earth couldn't live here, because they needed air. The
exercise made Benn and his father puff and sweat, but they had to do it every day because they needed the
gravity of Earth as well as air to breathe.
"Better forget your dreams." His father looked hard at him. "Learn to like the halo."
Benn shook his head and kept on jogging. The cage was in the gym tank. That was part of the big wheel
they lived in, spinning very slowly here at the fringe of Cluster One. The cluster was a city, a little cloud of
ice-moons and strange eldren places spinning around the home of the Eldermost, all so far out that the Sun
was only one more star. He had never seen Earth at all, but his mother still called it home.
"Let's cool off." They slowed the cage and jumped out into the cold thin stink of old sweat and alien
plastics. "You wouldn't like Earth." They sat on a bench. "Not the way it is."
But he loved Earth, the way it was in his mind. The huge home world, so much bigger and stranger than
these bare gray snowballs. He wanted to walk on soft green grass under tall green trees and a bright blue
sky. He'd always dreamed of towering mountains and stormy oceans and the great human cities hung like
diamonds in the skyweb above them. He wanted to feel the strong pull of Earth and the push of the wind
and heat of the sun on his bare face, with no eldren lifeskin sealing them away.
"Why?" he whispered. "Why?"
His father took a long time to answer, and his voice seemed tired. "Old Earth was wonderful once, at
least for your mother. But we can't go back."
He waited for his father to explain.
"We never told you, Benn." A little muscle bunched on his father's jaw. "But you're six today. I think
you're old enough to know what happened."
He waited again, but his father sat staring off at the thick green vines of the walls of the habitat till he had
to ask, "What did happen?"
"A thing came out of space and tore the skyweb down."
He knew about the web. Runesong had told him what it had been: the great human city, really a thousand
cities hanging in the sky, its houses and factories and space docks strung like shining beads on strong
kwanlon wires that spread midway out to the Moon. He'd seen holo pictures of the web and read about it in