"E. C. Tubb - Dumarest 19 - The Quillian Sector" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tubb E. C)

The Quillian Sector
#19 in the Dumarest series

E.C. Tubb


Cover art by H. R. Van Dongen


DEDICATION

To Julie Emma Hickmott

FIRST PRINTING, DECEMBER 1978
PRINTED IN U. S. A.




Chapter One

A great bowl of flowers had been set on a small table close to
the window so that their petals reflected the light in a mass of
glowing scarlet necked with amber, the stamens a brilliant
yellow around styles of dusty black. The bowl itself was of veined
porphyry, shaped with a rare elegance, curves melting one into
the other to form an object of both visual and tactile beauty. A
thing of delicate elegance in direct contrast to the room itself,
which was bleak in its Spartan simplicity, all white and
functional, the walls devoid of any decoration, even the carpet a
neutral gray.

A room in which to work, to study and to plan with all
distraction kept to a minimum. Something Irae could
appreciate, as he could not the flowers. They were an anomaly
and he crossed the room to stand before them, studying their
form and arrangement before lifting his head to stare through
the window itself.

It was set high in the building and framed a view of grim
desolation. The soil had been leached to expose the underlying
rock, the vegetation which once had covered it long since gone,
as were the minerals once contained within the stone. Machines
had dug and ripped and crushed and spewed their detritus,
turning a pleasant landscape into a barren wilderness.
Exploitation had left nothing but sourness and acid rains which,
even as he watched, came to add more corrosion to the thick
pane and the metal in which it was set.

Looking down, he could now understand the presence of the