Chalker, Jack L. Melchior's fire.Baen. 295p. c2002. 0-7434-3583-4. $.799. SA In this sequel to Balshazzar's Serpent, the crew of the Henry Morton Stanley Sir Henry Morton Stanley, born John Rowlands (January 28, 1841 – May 10, 1904), was a journalist and explorer famous for his exploration of Africa and his search for David Livingstone. , a salvage salvage, in maritime law, the compensation that the owner must pay for having his vessel or cargo saved from peril, such as shipwreck, fire, or capture by an enemy. Salvage is awarded only when the party making the rescue was under no legal obligation to do so. space vehicle, is desperate for money after their latest job ends in disaster. Wealthy producer Norman Sanders San´ders n. 1. An old name of sandalwood, now applied only to the red sandalwood. See under Sandalwood. meets with Randi Queson and her crew and is eager to hire them for an expedition to the fabled Three Kings, three moons that many have searched for that are rumored to be a paradise. Sanders acquires the Stanley's services for the purpose of finding Magi's Stones in that area. These beautiful gem-like structures, worth a fortune, produce mind-altering effects and may be alien communication devices. For the excursion excursion /ex·cur·sion/ (eks-kur´zhun) a range of movement regularly repeated in performance of a function, e.g., excursion of the jaws in mastication. , Sanders provides the crew with a robotic camera named Eyegor as well as with secret coordinates to help the ship reach its destination. The Stanley's crew arrives at the Three Kings and communicates with Doctor Woodward's colony, a group lost to the Three Kings in the previous novel, on Balshazzar. The colony warns the Stanley not to land the ship on Balshazzar or it will be unable to leave the planet. When the salvage ship experiments with the warning, it loses a probe before the decision is made to simply head for Melchior. On Melchior, the crew of the Stanley faces a similar fate as Woodward's colony. This novel provides the reader with a wild ride and a delightfully fast read. It can stand alone, but will be most appreciated by readers of the first novel in the series. Ending with a statement alluding to the secrets of the third moon of the Three Kings, Chalker whets the appetite for the third book in the trilogy A company founded in 1979 by Gene Amdahl to commercialize wafer scale integration and build supercomputers. It raised a quarter of a billion dollars, the largest startup funding in history, but could not create its 2.5" superchip. , Kaspar's Box. Ginger Armstrong, Prin. Lib. Assoc., Chesterfield Chesterfield, city (1991 pop. 73,352) and district, Derbyshire, central England. An important industrial center, Chesterfield produces mining equipment, railroad cars, metal products, glass, and pottery. City. PL., Chesterfield, VA |
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