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The First Book of Lankhmar

Titel: The First Book of Lankhmar Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Fritz Leiber
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perceptible wind or current. Shortly afterward it had bumped over the lip of the large saucer-shaped depression and slid to its present position with a little rush and then frozen there, as though the sloop's bowsprit and the hole were mutually desirous magnetic poles coupling together. Thereafter, while the Mouser had watched with eyes goggling and teeth a-chatter, Fafhrd had sighted down the hole, grunted with stolid satisfaction, slung the knotted rope down it, and then proceeded to array himself, seemingly with both war and love in mind — pomading his bushy hair and beard, perfuming his hairy chest and armpits, putting on a blue silk tunic under the gleaming one of otterskin and all his silver-plated necklaces, armbands, brooches and rings as well, but also strapping longsword and ax to his sides and lacing on his spiked boots. Then he had lit a long thin torch of resinous pine in the galley firebox, and when it was flaming bravely he had, despite the Mouser's solicitous cries and tugging protests, gone out on the bowsprit and lowered himself into the hole, using thumb and forefinger of his right hand to grip the torch and the other three fingers of that hand, along with his left hand, to grip the rope. Only then had he spoken, calling on the Mouser to make ready and follow him if the Mouser were more hot-blooded man than cold-blooded lizard.
           The Mouser had made ready to the extent of stripping off most of his clothing — it had occurred to him it would be necessary to dive for Fafhrd when the hole became aware of its own impossibility and collapsed — and he had fetched to the foredeck his own sword Scalpel and dagger Cat's Claw in their case of oiled sealskin with the notion they might be needed against sharks. Thereafter he had simply poised on the bowsprit, as we have seen, observing Fafhrd's slow descent and letting the fascination of it all take hold of him.
           At last he dipped his head and called softly down the hole, "Fafhrd, have you reached bottom yet?" frowning at the ring-shaped ripples even this gentle calling sent traveling down the hole and up again by reflection.
           "What did you say?"
           Fafhrd's answering bellow, concentrated by the tube and coming out of it like a solid projectile, almost blasted the Mouser off the bowsprit. Far more terrifying, the ring-ripples accompanying the bellow were so huge they almost seemed to close off the tube — narrowing it from four to two or three feet at any rate and dashing a spray of drops up into the Mouser's face as they reached the surface, lifting the rim upward as if the water were elastic, and then were reflected down the tube again.
           The Mouser closed his eyes in a wince of horror, but when he opened them the hole was still there, and the giant ring-ripples were beginning to abate.
           Only a shade more loudly than the first time, but much more poignantly, the Mouser called down, "Fafhrd, don't do that again!"
           "What?"
           This time the Mouser was prepared for it — just the same it was most horrid to watch those huge rings traveling up and down the tube in an arrow-swift green peristalsis. He firmly resolved to do no more calling, but just then Fafhrd started to speak up the tube in a voice of more rational volume — the rings produced were hardly thicker than a man's wrist.
           "Come on, Mouser! It's Easy! You only have to drop the last six feet!''
           "Don't drop it, Fafhrd!" the Mouser instantly replied. "Climb back up!"
           "I already have! Dropped, I mean. I'm on the bottom! Oh, Mouser!"
           The last part of Fafhrd's call was in a voice so infused with a mingled awe and excitement that the Mouser immediately asked back down, "What? 'Oh Mouser' — what?"
           "It's wonderful, it's amazing, it's fantastic!" the reply came back from below — but this time very faintly all of a sudden, as if Fafhrd had somehow gone around an impossible bend or two in the tube.
           " What is, Fafhrd?" the Mouser demanded — and this time his own voice raised moderate rings. "Don't go away, Fafhrd. But what is down there?"
           "Everything!'' the answer came back, not quite so faint this time.
           "Are there girls?" the Mouser queried.
           "A whole world!"
           The Mouser sighed. The moment had come, he knew, as it always did, when outward circumstances and inner urges

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