"Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Hunters of the Red Moon - 1973" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradley Marion Zimmer)

A speaker on the wall buzzed and one of the lion-faced creatures said without looking up, "Right away," and, taking the cup from Dane, indicated that he should stand up. "Go over to that door. Someone will be there to take you to your quarters...."

Dane dug in his heels stubbornly. "Not until I get a few questions answered," he said. "I know I'm on board a spaceship. But why? Where do you come from? What are you going to do with me?"

_The being who had shocked him with the wand made a threatening gesture. "I already told you; it is no part of our duty to answer your questions. Do as you're told and you won't get hurt."

Dane put Ms head down and rushed. He actually seized the lion-headed creature with one outstretched hand, giving a sharp judo twist

And the roof fell in on him and he disappeared.

When Dane Marsh woke again he was in. a cage.

That was his first impression; shadows of slanting bars running up and down between him and the light, which was bluish-white and pale. A cage.

He stirred, sat up, dizzily clutching his head.

On second look, more prison than cage. A large barred room, lined on one wall with sleeping bunks, netting crisscrossed in front of them-he supposed, to keep the occupants from falling out during fast maneuvers. In the large room there were about a dozen people.

People; loosely. About half of them were human like himself, or with differences too minor for him to see at once. None were the lion-faced breed he had met hi the place where he had awakened before, which he supposed was a sort of ship's hospital. But about half of the occupants of the room where he found himself were very much like himself. The others were-different.

There was a being at least eight feet tall, who reminded him strangely of a spider; gray and fuzzy and with strange large- eyes; and he had a confused impression of more arms and legs than there ought to be, although he couldn't quite figure out why. There was one who was squat and powerfully built with leathery skin or leathery clothing and a face-mask of the same. It was too much for Dane Marsh to take in all at once.

_My God, am I in a zoo? Just one of the animals?

"Not a zoo," said a woman, standing by his bunk, and Dane realized he had spoken aloud. The words sounded strange but Dane seemed to "hear" them resonating against the disk which the lion-things had implanted in his throat He supposed it was a mechanical translator of some sort; he couldn't even begin to imagine the technology which had created such a thing. "No, you're not in a zoo. Not quite. You'd probably be better off if you were. This is a Mekhar slave ship."

He started to swing his legs over the bunk; the woman bent and helped unstrap the webbing from the front. He said, "How long was I out?"

"A couple of hours. They must have used a tangler set to stun-they have one in the hospital, and I imagine they captured you with one."

Dane thought back to the last moments on the deck of the _Seadrift. "Yes. My arms and legs kept moving slower and slower and I finally must have passed out. It was a nightmare."

"It was real enough," the woman said somberly. She was about Dane's age, with red hair waving loosely, uncombed, and wearing a sort of loose shirt and trousers which looked like what a Russian or Israeli girl soldier would wear. "Are you from one of the worlds of the Unity? Slaving is forbidden in any of the Unity star-systems, but the Mekhar ships do it anyway; it pays well enough for them to risk it."

Dane said, "I'm sorry. This is too much for me to take in. You mean your ship really does come from the stars?"

She said, "As nearly as I can figure out, we've covered about thirty star-systems. The slave quarters are almost full; I expect they'll be heading for the Mekhar marts quite soon now. It's rare for them to pick up only one person on a planet; does your world have good guard systems against slave raids?"

"None of us on my world have any idea such things exist," Dane said wryly. "People who talk about ships from the stars are usually locked up-or laughed at anyway, as lunatics. I was sailing alone in a small boat"

"Out of sight of land? That explains it, then; they just swooped down and grabbed you up, probably expecting to find eight or ten people aboard," the redheaded woman said. "Somebody in the control room is probably getting a clawing-out right now."

"The Mekhars? Are they the lion-faced things I saw?" He hesitated, reflecting that she might not know what a _lion was, but evidently the mechanical translator provided her with the nearest equivalent, for she said, "Yes, they're proto-felines, and I personally think they're the most savage people in the Galaxy. They've been five times refused membership in the Unity, you know. You-oh, excuse me, if your world is a Closed world, you probably don't even know what the Unity is. Do you have space travel?"

"Only on a small scale. We're exploring our own moon and have had two or three manned expeditions to Mars-our fourth planet," Dane said.

"Well, the Unity is-I suppose you'd say it's a loose Peace-and-Trade Federation. It was the Unity which first formulated the concept of Universal Sapience; before that the proto-felines looked down on us-the proto-simians-and proto-reptilians on both. And so forth and so on. You can catch up on that some other time. Tell me, what's your name?"

He told her. "And yours?" he asked. "How did you happen to be captured? Doesn't your world believe in starships either?"