"Mary Rosenblum - Splinters of Glass" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenblum Mary)

SPLINTERS OF GLASS
MARY ROSENBLUM



H
ere’s a tense and fast-paced adventure that takes us to Europa for a deadly game of
cat and mouse beneath its frozen surface, a game where a second’s indecision or a
moment of carelessness can make the dif-ference between life and an especially
horrible death...

One of the most popular and prolific of the new writers of the nineties, Mary
Rosenblum made her first sale, to Asimov’s Science Fiction, in 1990, and has since
become a mainstay of that magazine, and one of its most frequent contributors, with
almost thirty sales there to her credit. She has also sold to The Magazine of Fantasy
and Science Fiction, Science Fiction Age, Pulphouse, New Legends, and
elsewhere.

Rosenblum produced some of the most colorful, exciting, and emotionally
powerful stories of the nineties, earning her a large and devoted following of readers.
Her linked series of “Drylands” stories have proved to be one of Asimov’s most
popular series, but she has also published memo-rable stories such as “The Stone
Garden,” “Synthesis,” “Flight,” “California Dreamer,” “Casting at Pegasus,”
“Entrada,” “Rat,” “The Centaur Garden,” “Skin Deep,” “Songs the Sirens Sing,”
and many, many others. Her novella “Gas Fish” won the Asimov’s Readers Award
Poll in 1996, and was a final-ist for that year’s Nebula Award. Her first novel, The
Drylands, appeared in 1993 to wide critical acclaim, winning the prestigious
Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel of the year; it was followed in short
order by her second novel, Chimera, and her third, The Stone Garden. Her first
short story collection, Synthesis and Other Stories, was widely hailed by critics as
one of the best collections of 1996. She has also written a trilogy of mystery novels
under the name Mary Freeman. Her most recent book is a major new sci-ence fiction
novel, Horizons. A graduate of Clarion West, Rosenblum lives in Portland, Oregon.

****

He wouldn’t have seen her arrive if his board hadn’t broken down. He wouldn’t
have known. Qai stepped back against the carved-ice facade of a tea vendor’s stall,
holding his narrow board like a silver shield in front of him. He caught only a glimpse
before she vanished among the passengers disembarking from the monthly shuttle,
as they hurried across the gangway to the Ice Palace arrival dock with its tiny
customs gate. Most scattered quickly, IDing their way through the “resident” gate,
moving with the pur-poseful skimming strides of travelers returning home. Only a
couple of newbies. You could always tell them by the way they walked,
high-stepping in slow motion in the thirteen-percent earth-normal gravity—as if
walking on a waterbed. And they panted. The nano—red cell transfusions didn’t
really make up for the low atmospheric pressure and minimal oxygen of Europa’s
sea-level ice caverns. And of course, they looked up to the vast arch of the Ice
Palace dome, its natural ice walls flickering with rainbows in the broad-spectrum light
of the Lamp, veined with multicolored moss. Everyone felt it, first time on Europa...