"Anderson, Poul - 1970 Flandry 09 - A Circus of Hells" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

A CIRCUS OF HELLS
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Poul Anderson
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[31 jan 2003--scanned by Wickman99]

[07 feb 2003--proofed for #bookz]

I
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The story is of a lost treasure guarded by curious monsters, and of
captivity in a wilderness, and of a chase through reefs and shoals that
could wreck a ship. There is a beautiful girl in it, a magician, a spy
or two, and the rivalry of empires. So of course--Flandry was later
tempted to say--it begins with a coincidence.

However, the likelihood that he would meet Tachwyr the Dark was not
fantastically low. They were in the same profession, which had them
moving through a number of the same places; and they also shared the
adventurous-ness of youth. To be sure, once imperialism is practiced on
an interstellar scale, navies grow in size until the odds are huge
against any given pair of their members happening on each other.
Nevertheless, many such encounters were taking place, as was inevitable
on one of the rare occasions when a Merseian warship visited a Terran
planet. A life which included no improbable events would be the real
statistical impossibility.

The planet was Irumclaw, some 200 light-years from Sol in that march of
the human realm which faced Betelgeuse. Lieutenant (j.g.) Dominic
Flandry had been posted there not long before, with much wailing and
gnashing of teeth until he learned that even so dismal a clod had its
compensations. The Merseian vessel was the cruiser Brythioch, on a swing
through the buffer region of unclaimed, mostly unknown suns between the
spaces ruled in the names of Emperor and Roidhun. Neither government
would have allowed any craft belonging to its rival, capable of spouting
nuclear fire, any appreciable distance into its territory. But border
authorities could, at discretion, accept a "goodwill visit." It broke
the monotony and gave a slight hope of observing the kind of trivia
which, fitted together, now and then revealed a fact the opposition
would have preferred to keep secret.

In this case Merseia profited, at least initially.

Official hospitality was exchanged. Besides protocol, the humans were
motivated, whether they knew it or not, to enjoy the delicate frisson
that came from holding converse with those who--beneath every diplomatic
phrase--were the enemy. Flandry did know it; he had seen more of life