Загадочная смерть любимой подруги Кэролин стала для Миранды лишь началом череды странных событий. Ключом к разгадке смерти девушки и многих других ужасающих и необъяснимых происшествий становятся бусы из мориона, которые Миранда нашла у себя в квартире после похорон…
То ли это триллер, то ли хоррор… Не знаю, судите сами. Но это воистину самая необыкновенная история самой обыкновенной русской семьи. Слава Всевышнему, что история эта случилась лишь в моей фантазии, и я надеюсь, что нечто подобное никогда не случится ни в России, ни в любой другой стране.Хотя, кто знает…
There was also another prophet and his name was Shaun, who had such reverence for the gods of Old that he became able to discern their forms by starlight as they strode, unseen by others, among men. And in the city Shaun’s followers built three temples. The one on the right was a temple for the young, and the one on the left a temple for the old, and the third was a temple for the old, and the third was a temple with doors closed and barred—therein none ever entered. For many years Shaun and his...
So I came down through the wood on the bank of Yann and found, as had been prophesied, the ship Bird of the River about to loose her cable. The captain sat cross-legged upon the white deck with his scimitar lying beside him in its jeweled scabbard, and the sailors toiled to spread the nimble sails to bring the ship into the central stream of Yann, and all the while sang ancient soothing songs. And the wind of the evening descending cool from the snowfields of some mountainous abode of distant...
In science-fiction, as in all categories of fiction, there are stories that are so outstanding from the standpoint of characterization, concept, and background development that they remain popular for decades. Two such stories were Murray Leinster’s The Mad Planet and Red Dust.Originally published in 1923, they have been reprinted frequently both here and abroad. Now Murray Leinster has written the final story in the series. It is not necessary to have read the previous stories to enjoy this...
Xanadu. Not the Xanadu of Coleridge's poem, but-to the half-forgotten space drifter who discovered the place thirty years ago-a reasonable facsimile. It was a cloistered nun of a city, hidden behind a wide skirt of the most impassable mountains on Mars. And the city was more impassable than the mountains. No human being had ever entered it-yet. They'd tried. Two expeditions, twelve years apart, had vanished without trace, without explanation other than the dusty notebook Andrew had...
Toldees, Mondath, Arizim, these are the Inner Lands, the lands whose sentinels upon their borders do not behold the sea. Beyond them to the east there lies a desert, for ever untroubled by man: all yellow it is, and spotted with shadows of stones, and Death is in it, like a leopard lying in the sun. To the south they are bounded by magic, to the west by a mountain, and to the north by the voice and anger of the Polar wind. Like a great wall is the mountain to the west. It comes up out of the...
It was nearly sundown when Ravdin eased the ship down into the last slow arc toward the Earth's surface. Stretching his arms and legs, he tried to relax and ease the tension in his tired muscles. Carefully, he tightened the seat belt for landing; below him he could see the vast, tangled expanse of Jungle-land spreading out to the horizon. Miles ahead was the bright circle of the landing field and the sparkling glow of the city beyond. Ravdin peered to the north of the city, hoping to catch...
Eighteen men and two women in the closed world of a space ship for five months can only spell tension and trouble—but in this case, the atmosphere was literally poisoned. Five months out from Earth, we were half-way to Saturn and three-quarters of the way to murder. At least, I was. I was sick of the feuding, the worries and the pettiness of the other nineteen aboard. My stomach heaved at the bad food, the eternal smell of people, and the constant sound of nagging and complaints. For ten lead...
They asked me about it, of course, before I boarded the starship. All through the Western sector of the Galaxy, few rules are stricter than the one dividing human from nonhuman, and the little Captain of the Vesta-he was Terran, too, and proud in the black leather of the Empire's merchant-man forces-hemmed and hawed about it, as much as was consistent with a spaceman's dignity. «You see, Miss Vargas,» he explained, not once but as often as I would listen to him, «this is not, strictly...
He was just dozing off when the fat lady up the aisle let out a scream. A huge reptilian head had materialized out of nowhere and was hanging in air, peering about uncertainly. A scaly green body followed, four feet away, complete with long razor talons, heavy hind legs, and a whiplash tail with a needle at the end. For a moment the creature floated upside down, legs thrashing. Then the head and body joined, executed a horizontal pirouette, and settled gently to the floor like an eight-foot...