Lankar of Callisto
- Автор: Картер Лин Спрэг
- Серия: Callisto #6
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Lankar of Callisto». Краткое содержание книги:
...in the mysterious and treacherous domain of the insidious Mind Wizards. Searching for him is a fearless armada of his loyal friends, and a stranger who knows him better than anyone on Callisto. The stranger, Lankar, is none other than Lin Carter, accidentally transported through the Gate Between the Worlds to the land of the Thanatorians. Aware of Jandar's plight, Lankar joins the search beyond the world's edge and suddenly finds himself battling for his own existence against the most nightmarish creatures on the planet - the gruesome flesh robots of Kuur and the fiendish Mind Wizards of Callisto themselves...
She marveled at this display of willpower. Then she threw back her head and laughed, long hair tousling on her shoulders.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing … nothing at all! I was just thinking the way you smoke, it would take something as unprecedented as a surprise trip to the fifth moon of Jupiter, to get you to give ‘em up!”
Our return tickets had been bought and paid for before we had left New York, but we hadn’t made return reservations, not knowing just when we would want to leave. So we hadn’t forfeited the tickets or missed our flight. And when at last we did get home to take up the orderly confusion of our everyday lives, it was to be greeted by several hysterical dogs who had been wondering where we were and why the familiar routine of their lives had been so thoroughly disrupted, and by my sister-in-law who was grateful to be able to turn the care and feeding of the mutts back into our hands again, and by my agent who had been fretting over my prolonged absence while frantically stalling publishers whose contracts were sitting on his desk unsigned, awaiting my signature.
“Some vacation that was,” my wife grumbled one evening, sprawled wearily on the living room couch in front of the tv, after a day of housekeeping. “I’ll never be able to understand how I can work myself to the bone before we go away, getting the house cleaned up so we can leave it―then come back and work myself to the bone getting it cleaned up all over again. Mysterious stuff!”
“I guess so,” I said. “But it was fun, wasn’t it? The mysterious East―exotic Phnom Penh―the Lost City of Arangkor,”
“Sure,” she grinned. “There I was, stuck in the middle of the jungle, eating canned soup and fighting off mosquitos as big as horses, and looking my best in a set of baggy khakis splashed up to here with mud―and there you were, gallivanting around Callisto, fighting Mind Wizards and rescuing people, with a bunch of Callistan princesses giving you the eye!”
“I told you before, there weren’t any princesses,” I reminded her.
“Maybe! But when you get to talking about the trip, sometimes you get all musty-eyed and tendervoiced .
“I guess I do,” I admitted. “I can explain that, though. Remind me to tell you about Bozo, sometime.”
” `Bozo’? Well, that’s more like it. I can’t imagine a princess named Bozo. Is it this mysterious Bozo you miss so badly?”
“Yep.” And I began to tell her the whole story. And when I was finished her suspicions were allayed. After all, even wives can’t very well feel jealous of sixlegged, purple-furred othodes.
A POSTSCRIPT
This book was written over the next few months after we returned to Hollis. The typescript was all finished, hand-corrected, and about ready to be handed in to my editor at Dell when the letter arrived with the Phnom Penh postmark. It had appeared in the well and Sir Malcolm had forwarded it along to me.
The letter was written in a familiar hand with a thaptor quill pen in watery ink on dun-colored parchment. It read like this:
Shondakor,
9th xapac, 20th chore, fifth day of third zome. Dear Mr. Carter,
We hope you arrived in Cambodia safely and that Mrs. Carter was not too distraught at your lengthy absence. By now you must be back in New York working on new books.
Your friends here all ask to be remembered to you. That rascal Glypto has been making life miserable for poor old Abziz. Lukor and the others have returned, the missing Mind Wizard is dead, and Ylana and Tomar are back safely―I’ll tell you all about it when I have a chance to write you at length. Taran is a cadet in training with the legions, and is having the time of his life.
Just the other day we were out hunting along the edges of the Kumala, and who should appear but Bozo! He wouldn’t let anybody else near him, but seemed glad to see me. And took my sleeve in his mouth and drew me over to the edge of the woods. Then he growled and before long Mrs. Bozo came out of the brush, still very timid of people.
She was shy, but the pups were anything but! Yes, the pups (there is no other word for them, if you can imagine fat miniature Bozos about eleven inches long, scarcely able to toddle). There are eight of them in all, four little boy-pups and four little girl-pups, and the cutest fat little fellows imaginable!
They came waddling right up to be petted and licked my hands and sniffed at my ankles and in general behaved with complete fearlessness―under the proud eyes of Bozo, who sat with tongue lolling, grinning froggishly all the while, and under the more-than-slightly-nervous eyes of their mother, who doesn’t hold with human beings at all and seemed convinced I would kidnap her babies on the spot. She didn’t relax until a whuff! from their father sent them waddling back to her side.
Just thought you’d like to know how things turned out. So the Bozo mystery is solved, and there’s another story with a happy ending for you.
Very best wishes,
JANDAR OF CALLISTO