"Dickson, Gordon - Call Him Lord" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

the leather jacket at the bottom and let it fall open to show
the slug pistol in its holster for a moment. Then he resealed
the jacket again at the bottom.
"Will" The tutor put his hand on the young man's knee.
"Don't be reckless, boy. This is Earth and the people here
don't have rank and custom like we do. Think before you"
"Oh, cut it out, Monty!" snapped the Prince. "I'll be just as
incognito, just as humble, as archaic and independent as the
rest of them. You think I've no memory! Anyway, it's only
for three days or so until my Imperial father joins me. Now,
let me go!"
He jerked away, turned to lean forward in the saddle, and
abruptly put the gelding into a bolt for the gate. He disap-
peared through it, and Kyle drew hard on the stallion's reins
as the big white horse danced and tried to follow.
"Give me his saddlebags," said Kyle.
The tutor bent and passed them up. Kyle made them fast
on top of his own, across the stallion's withers. Looking
down, he saw there were tears in the bearded man's eyes.
"He's a fine boy. You'll see. You'll know he is!" Montia-
ven's face, upturned, was mutely pleading.
"I know he comes from a fine family," said Kyle, slowly.
"I'll do my best for him." And he rode off out of the gateway
after the gelding.
When he came out of the gate, the Prince was nowhere in
sight. But it was simple enough for Kyle to follow, by dinted
brown earth and crushed grass, the marks of the gelding's
path. This brought him at last through some pines to a grassy
open slope where the Prince sat looking skyward through a
single-lens box.
When Kyle came up, the Prince lowered the instrument
and, without a word, passed it over. Kyle put it to his eye and
looked skyward. There was the whir of the tracking unit and
one of Earth's three orbiting power stations swam into the
field of vision of the lens.
"Give it back," said the Prince.
"I couldn't get a look at it earlier," went on the young man
as Kyle handed the lens to him. "And I wanted to. It's a
rather expensive present, you knowit and the other two like
itfrom our Imperial treasury. Just to keep your planet from
drifting into another ice age. And what do we get for it?"
"Earth, Lord," answered Kyle. "As it was before men went
out to the stars."
"Oh, the museum areas could be maintained with one
station and a half-million caretakers," said the Prince. "It's
the other two stations and you billion or so free-loaders I'm
talking about. I'll have to look into it when I'm Emperor. Shall
we ride?"
"If you wish. Lord." Kyle picked up the reins of the
stallion and the two horses with their riders moved off across