"Julian May - The Many - Coloured Land" - читать интересную книгу автора (May Julian)

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The Many-Coloured Land
JULIAN MAY


[02 oct 2001 - scanned for #bookz by chaosdance]
[18 oct 2001 - proofed for #bookz - by bookleech, v 1.0]

Volume 1 in the Saga of the Exiles
for Tadeusz Maxim, the noblest of them all


My heart is sore pained within me:
and the terrors of death are fallen upon me.
Fear and trembling have seized me: and darkness has overwhelmed me.
And I said: O that I had wings like a dovel. For then I would fly away and be at rest
Lo, would I flee far away, and live in the wilderness.
I would wait for him who will save me from my cowardice and from the storm.

psalm 55


PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE
To confirm that it was indeed near death, the great vessel broke through into normal space with
lingering slowness. The pain of the usually swift translation was prolonged as well, until the
thousand, for all their strength, cursed and wept within their minds and became convinced that
they would be trapped. It would be the gray limbo endlessly. That and pain.
But the Ship was doing its best. Sharing the agony of the passengers, it pushed and pried against
the tough fabric of the superficies until there were flickers of black against the gray. The Ship
and the people felt their anguish dim into a mere harmony of nearly musical vibrations that
echoed, damped, and finally snapped off.
They hung in normal space, stars all around them.
The Ship had emerged in the shadow cone of a planet. For long moments, as the stunned travelers
watched without knowing what they saw, the halo of pink atmosphere and the pearly wings of the
eclipsed sun's corona gave an aureole to the black world. Then the Ship's ominous momentum carried
them on; the chromosphere and the orange flames of the sun's limb burst forth, followed by its
dazzling yellow substance.
The Ship curved in. The sunlit surface of the planet seemed to roll open beneath them at their
approach. It was a blue world with white clouds and snowy mountains and landmasses of ochre and
red and gray-green, beyond doubt a world of compatible life. The Ship had succeeded.
Thagdal turned to the small woman at the directive console. Brede of the Two Faces shook her head.
Dreary violet patterns on the motive display made plain that it had been the final effort of the
Ship that brought them to this haven. They were fully in the grip of the system's gravity and no
longer capable of inertialess locomotion.
Thagdal's mind and voice spoke. "Listen to me, remnant of battle companies. Our faithful craft has
all but perished. It subsists only on mechanicals now and they will not serve much longer. We are
on an impact trajectory and we must disembark before the hulk enters the lower atmosphere."