title: Weird Space: The Devil's Nebula
author:  Eric Brown 
description: <b>Eric Brown</b> is the award-winning author of a huge number of SF novels, such as <i>Helix</i>, <i>Guardians of the Phoenix</i>, <i>Necropath</i>, and <i>The Fall of Tartarus</i>, as well as many children's books, radio plays articles and reviews.
zlib_text:  
  The End
  of the Matter
   
  Alan Dean Foster
  
  A Del Rey Book
  Copyright © 1977
  ISBN 0.345-29594-3
  First Edition: November 1977
  Fourth Printing: May 1983
  Cover art by Darrell Sweet
  
  For Tim Kirk,
  With thranx …
  
  CONTENT
  Prologue
  Chapter One
  Chapter Two
  Chapter Three
  Chapter Four
  Chapter Five
  Chapter Six
  Chapter Seven
  Chapter Eight
  Chapter Nine
  Chapter Ten
  Chapter Eleven
  Chapter Twelve
  Chapter Thirteen
  Chapter Fourteen
  About The Author
  
  Prologue
  Take a God-sized bottle of hundred-proof night, spill it across a couple of
  dozen light-years, and you have the phenomenon humanxkind called the
  Velvet Dam. A dark nebula so dense that no near star was powerful enough
  to excite it to glow, the Dam drew an impenetrable curtain across a vast
  portion of the stage of space. No sun shone through it to the inhabited
  region known as the HumanxCommonwealth. No broadcasts,
  transmissions, or birthday greetings could be sent from beyond the vast
  ebony wall.
  It lay far above the burgeoning ellipsoid of the Commo