"Tom Godwin - The Space barbarians" - читать интересную книгу автора (Godwin Tom)

"So it's not on the Ghost, after all," John said to the others. "Yet there
has to be a connection—the mockers are scared only when the Ghost is
near."

"Six hundred lightyears is a long way to send a ship to spy on us," Dale
said. "What kind of things sent it—and why?"

They knew only that the Ghost ship was not Gern. Ten days ago the
surrender of the Gern Empire had taken place on the Ragnarok. The
Ragnarok had been poised above the smoldering remains of the luxury
city where once the Gern leaders had feasted on rare foods, drank rare
wines, and gloried in their power as they made decisions that affected the
fates of worlds and the lives of billions. The humble surrender had been
broadcast to all worlds formerly held by the Gerns and the surrender
terms given; terms that freed every world and every race from any vestige
of Gern control and contained grim provisions for the punishment of any
individual or groups which might try to hinder the change to freedom and
independence.

Had the Ghost belonged to the Gerns, they .would surely have used it.
Now, the war was over and the Terran and Ragnarokan ships not needed
for occupation duty were on their way to Earth, following the Ragnarok.
John could see the other ships in the rear viewscreens—an armada of
battleships, cruisers, scout ships, observation ships…

And the Ghost was waiting ahead of them all, sending it's spy-ray
probing into every ship of the fleet.

The whiteness on the screen enlarged faster and faster as they neared
the Ghost. They watched it, until the entire screen was white. Then, as
suddenly as switching off a light, the whiteness was gone from the forward
screen and was filling the rear screen instead.

"Well," Norman said, "we went through the Ghost again. How do we
fight something like that?"

The whiteness on the rear screen dwindled in size. Then, when the
entire fleet had passed it by, the Ghost ship suddenly accelerated. It took a
course at an angle to the course of the fleet and was a diminishing white
dot on the screen when it suddenly vanished.

Its course was almost straight toward their own world— Ragnarok.

John looked at Dale and Norman and in their eyes he saw the reflection
of his own thoughts: a little over four thousand women, children, and men
too old for any kind of war duty, were on Ragnarok. They represented the
entire race of Ragnarok but for the fifteen hundred men on the ships.
They had one medium-duty disintegrator for protection, mounted on a hill
beside the little town, and nothing else. The speed of the Ghost ship was
twenty-five times the speed of the Ragnarok—there was no way in the