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

than the average twenty-one-year-old. He was sure the liberty parties
down in Old Town were being offered quite a few drinks, and other
amenities in certain cases.

Well, why not? They had been long in the deeps between the stars. If
they were straight back from here, they must travel a good 140
light-years--about ten standard days at top hyperspeed, but still an
abyss whose immensity and strangeness wore down the hardiest
spirit--before they could raise the outermost of the worlds they called
their own. They needed a few hours of small-scale living, be their hosts
never so hostile.

Which we aren't anyway, Flandry thought. We should be, but we aren't,
most of us. He grinned. Including me. Though he would have liked to join
the fun; he couldn't. The junior officers of Irumclaw Base must hold the
customary reception for their opposite numbers from the ship. (Their
seniors gave another in a separate building. The Merseians, variously
bemused or amused by the rigid Terran concept of rank, conformed. They
set more store by ceremony and tradition, even that of aliens, than
latter-day humans did.) While some of the visitors spoke Anglic, it
turned out that Flandry was the only man on this planet who knew Eriau.
The mess hall had no connection to the linguistic computer and there was
no time to jury-rig one. His translations would be needed more than his
physical presence.

Not that the latter was any disgrace, he reflected rather smugly. He was
tall and lithe and wore his dress uniform with panache and had become a
favorite among the girls downhill. Despite this, he remained well liked
by the younger men, if not always by his superiors.

He entered at the appointed evening hour. Under Commander Abdullah's
fishy eye, he saluted the Emperor's portrait not with his usual vague
wave but with a snap that well-nigh dislocated his shoulder. And a heel
click to boot, he reminded himself. Several persons being in line ahead
of him, he had a minute for taking stock. Its tables removed except for
one bearing refreshments--and its chairs, in deference to the
guests--the room stretched dreary. Pictures of former personnel,
trophies and citations for former accomplishments, seemed to make its
walls just the more depressing. An animation showed a park on Terra,
trees nodding, in the background the skyward leap of a rich family's
residential tower and airborne vehicles glittering like diamond dust;
but it reminded him too well of how far he was from those dear comforts.
He preferred the darkness in the real window. It was open and a breeze
gusted through, warm, laden with unearthly odors.

The Merseians were a more welcome sight, if only as proof that a
universe did exist beyond Irumclaw. Forty of them stood in a row,
enduring repeated introductions with the stoicism appropriate to a
warrior race.