Melchior's Fire
 ON THE RUN FROM
THE INTERSTELLAR MOB!
For centuries, interstellar prospectors had searched for the fabled worlds of the Three Kings, the lost El Dorado of the galaxy. But none had succeeded. Only the mad cyborg Prophet, Ishmael Hand, had ever seen the mysterious system, and he had refused to reveal its location before vanishing forever into history. Then, with the help of his flock, a starfaring evangelist—Doctor Karl Woodward, preacher and leader of the starship The Mountain—found it, only to disappear in turn.
Now a new group of explorers must follow the trail that Woodward blazed. A spacegoing salvage team, desperately in debt after a violent alien menace ruins a lucrative assignment and decimates the group, is hired to follow the clues Woodward left behind. But the team’s shady creditors won’t want to wait . . . and they won’t much care how they get their investments back.
Fearing pursuit by their former backers, the group heads off for the ultimate salvage operation. By hook or by crook, they will find the Three Kings—if the galactic underworld’s repo men don’t get them first!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jack L. Chalker is one of science fiction’s most prolific and popular authors, with a readership numbering in the hundreds of thousands. His bestselling novels and series include The Changewinds, Midnight at the Well of Souls and its sequels, The Quintara Marathon trilogy, the Soul Rider series, the Rings of the Master series, and others. His novels have been translated into many foreign languages and many have been book club selections. He is a familiar figure at SF conventions, often as a guest speaker, frequently as toastmaster. He lives in Maryland with his wife and sons.
Illustration and cover design by Bob Eggleton
Cover Design by Carol Russo
|
|
 Hardcover
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and
events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real
people or incidents is purely coincidental.
First printing, June 2001
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Printed in the United States of America
|
ISBN: 0-671-31991-4
Copyright © 2001 by Jack L. Chalker
All rights reserved, including the right to
reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
http://www.baen.com
Typeset by Windhaven Press
Auburn, NH
Electronic version by WebWrights
http://www.webwrights.com
|