Marsh Mallow

Начало книги

They called the planet Bog for lack of anything nicer to say about it. The name was certainly appropriate if not 100 percent accurate. The entire planet was not a bog, but anyone set down in its narrow “temperate zone,” would find that hard to believe. The planet’s abundant supply of surface water brought to mind words like “sludge” and “morass”—even “bilge.” Not a drop of the stuff was drinkable. It contained salts and minerals in such concentration that, in some of the smaller bodies of water, you could float objects that would have sunk to the bottom on Earth or Pa-Loana or just about any other habitable planet Rhys Llewellyn could name.

Take that gently bobbing field lamp, for example. Rhys gazed at it in consternation as it was carried away on the sludgy currents of Brown Salt Lake, gliding serenely just out of his reach.

“See what I mean?” Roderick Halfax lobbed a flat rock at the lamp. It struck the metal casing with a muffled ping! and plopped into the water where it began the tedious and protracted process of sinking. A tiny cloud of native “fireflies,” already visible in the twilight, eddied above the flotsam, apparently attracted by the gleam of alien metal.

Читать дальше →