In the Green Star's Glow
- Автор: Картер Лин Спрэг
- Серия: Green Star Rises #5
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «In the Green Star's Glow». Краткое содержание книги:
But he was also an Earthling, whose helpless body lay in suspended animation in a guarded mansion in New England. It was his alien mind that drove Karn through perils that no other wold dare...
In the Green Star's Glow is a science fantasy novel in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Written by American author Lin Carter, it is the final book in his Green Star series. It was first published in 1976.
Sarchimus had dwelt in a dead city called Sotaspra, which had formerly been inhabited by the Kaloodha, an all-but extinct race of gaunt, gold-skinned, telepathically gifted Winged Men. They had been the masters of an amazing science, the Kaloodha, but a form of racial madness drove them to suicide. The lust for immortality was the fata morgana which had lured them over the brink of destruction. Today, only Zarqa alone was left of his vanished people. But their enigmatic handiwork could still be found here and there about the Green Star World. Their towers and cities had been built to last, and they had indeed lasted, untouched by time, for countless hundreds of millennia.
The Opal Tower suggested to Niamh a long-ago abandonment. Not that the sleek, glowing, glassy stone from which the tower was built had suffered from the merciless erosion of the ages. Quite to the contrary, no chip or crack or sign of crumbling could Niamh discern in all the luminous fabric of the shining structure. But an aura of emptiness clung about it like the reek of death and decay, all but palpable.
So, albeit warily, the girl approached the soaring spire.
The ever-changing colors that crawled and swirled across the gliding lines of the tower lent it the illusion of inner life, which formed an uncanny contrast with the air of abandonment and emptiness that pervaded its proximity. The princess noticed that the sleek, soaring curves of the wall were unbroken by any windows. The portal, however, when she came within sight of it, stood open; a tall, narrow, tapering entrance with a broad base and dwindling sides that grew together at the pointed top.
It yawned like an orifice, like a sphincter or a maw. Open, inviting, unguarded.
For a moment, Niamh lingered on the threshold. A momentary qualm possessed the girl, a trepidation that seemed almost to be trying to warn her against making an entry.
She paused, biting her lip in a torment of indecision.
The Opal Tower afforded her a haven of safety against the predators who would prowl hungrily with the coming of night. And the tower, with its air of seeming neglect and abandonment, was apparently tenantless. Should she go in, or should she pass the tower by?
No pampered exquisite, sheltered from harsh reality, unaccustomed to strife for survival, Niamh was a child of her wilderness world of giant trees and incredible monstrosities. Often before this she had fought for her life against huge odds, and during her long wanderings across the face of the Green Star World she had survived perils beyond number. The staunch girl hefted the bow of Zorak, an arrow hocked and at the ready.
What, after all, was there to fear?
So she approached the yawning portal and entered, and vanished from sight in purple gloom.
The tower closed its doorway, as a patient monster closes its jaws upon its unsuspecting prey.
Where the tapering, pointed entry had been was now a smooth, unbroken surface. It swirled with opalescent hues, that surface. Then it flushed crimson, the color of human blood!
Within the portal, Niamh found herself at one end of a long, winding corridor floored with glassy stuff. The walls soared above her, lost in gloom. Veils of purple shadow thickened about her until she could scarcely see her way and was forced to feel along the wall with one hand, step by step.
Suddenly, the gloom became absolute and the cool breeze which blew against her slender back and shoulders ceased abruptly. Niamh whirled, guessing that the portal was now blocked, that the door which led to freedom and the outer world was no longer open.
With amazement she discovered the portal had ceased to exist, and that the hallway ended in a slick, unbroken wall.
Then the floor tilted beneath her, curving downward.
With a sharp cry the girl lost her balance and fell forward. Down the steep, smooth incline she shot as down a greased slide.
Ahead of her lay only darkness.
Then the smooth chute down which she slid ended, and the girl hurtled into emptiness.
A resilient, elastic surface broke her fall, driving the air from her lungs. For long moments, gasping for breath, the princess floundered in the folds of some rubbery, yielding stuff, becoming entangled. Gathering her composure, she lay still, peering around her; but the gloom was unbroken.
With admirable foresight, even while falling, Niamh had retained her grip upon Zorak’s bow. Now she removed the arrow from the weapon and thrust the sharp metal barb into the elastic fabric which had broken her fall. It ripped and tore, and she sawed away at the rubbery stuff until she had made an opening of some size.
Then, removing from her garment a gem-studded brooch, she dropped the bit of jewelry through the opening, listening until she heard the clink of metal against stone. From the swiftness with which the sound had reached her, Niamh guessed that a stone surface lay not very far beneath her present position.
She dropped five or six feet, landing on a floor of smooth, dry stone.
During the next few moments she carefully felt her way about the dungeon cell into which she had fallen. It was a circular chamber, some ten yards from wall to wall, and completely empty save for herself.
The curving wall was unbroken by any door or entrance, at least at ground level. Feeling her way around the pit, she examined the wall from the floor to as high as she could reach, completely circling the room. She could find no means of escape whatsoever.
After a time, she gave up the attempt, and composed herself upon the floor, against one wall.
The chamber in which she found herself imprisoned resembled a wide stone well.
Unless she could somehow manage to climb back into the rubbery membrane which had caught and broken her fall like a net, and then climb back up through the roof into the corridor again, she was hopelessly imprisoned. And to perform such a feat in complete darkness was not only difficult, it was dangerous.
After a time, she slept …
When she awoke she found a dim radiance now illuminated her cell.
It was seemingly sourceless and seemed to radiate from empty air itself, as if luminous atoms of pure light drifted amid the atmospheric vapors.
By this mysterious and sourceless light, Niamh perceived that the rubbery net had been somehow withdrawn, and that the roof of the circular chamber in which she was captive was something like thirty feet above her. The roof was quite beyond her ability to reach, and now she could perceive no means of exit.
After a time, lacking anything to occupy herself with, the girl fell into a fitful doze again.
When she awoke, she found utensils of crockery laid out near where she lay. There was a green jug filled with cold fresh water, a broad and shallow bowl filled with succulent gobbets of meat swimming in a steamy broth which savored of herbs, and a thick ceramic spoon with which to down the stew.
For a moment, she hesitated to partake of the food, since it was possible that a subtle poison or narcotic had been slipped in it. After a moment’s reflection, however, she shrugged aside these fears with a rueful smile.
If her captors wished to kill her, there was no reason for them to supply her with food and drink, she reasoned, and she fell to with a hearty appetite. The stew was delicious, the cold water refreshing. Finishing her meal, the girl set aside the crockery and waited for further developments.
Whatever the reason she had been taken prisoner, at least it was not the intention of her captors to starve her to death, or to drive her mad with thirst.
But they had relieved her of the bow and arrows …
13.
The White Chamber
When next she slept, she woke to find the crockery gone from her side. It became evident to Niamh the Fair that there was some secret entrance into the circular cell besides the mysterious one in the roof.