"Martin H. Greenberg & Mark Tier - Visions of Liberty" - читать интересную книгу автора (Greenberg Martin H)

the planet.

One thing about this process puzzled Dantler. As the new arrival passed through the gate that opened on
the world of Llayless, he was immediately swarmed upon by a dozen or so lean and voracious-looking
men who reminded Dantler of a flock of vultures. He asked the man ahead of him in line who the vultures
were.

"Labor brokers," the other replied. "Didn't anyone warn you? You have to watch yourself, or you may
suddenly find you've signed away your life for the next seven years. If you catch so much as a glimpse of
a piece of paper coming your way, put your hands in your pockets. If you find a stylus in your fingers that
you don't remember picking up, throw it as far as you can. Be careful who you drink with. They have to
get your signature and also your fingerprints on the contract, but no contract has ever been voided
because the man who signed it claimed he was drunk."

When Dantler's turn came, he brushed the fingerprinting pad aside along with the rest of the formalities
and passed his credentials across the counter: passport with several pages bearing arrival and departure
stamps from various worlds, an embossed identification card, and a letter. The clerk scrutinized them in
turn and, after giving Dantler a startled glance, turned to a computer, typed briefly, and accepted the
result from a printer. He added one more stamp to Dantler's passport. Then, as an afterthought, he
carefully printed a number beside it.

He handed Dantler the form the computer had produced. "You should keep this with your passport," he
said. "You'll be asked for it when you leave Llayless. Just in case you lose it, which has happened, I've
recorded your arrival number in your passport. If you lose that, there'll have to be a tedious investigation,
so don't lose it. The town is only half a kilometer from the port, but don't try to walk there unless you're
equipped with sand shoes. There's a conveyor you can ride, or there's a 'bus that's a little faster and a lot
less comfortable."

He added, "Welcome to Llayless. I hope you enjoy your stay," and turned to the next new arrival.
Towing his space trunk, Dantler passed through the gate and was surprised to be totally ignored by the
labor brokers. The clerk must have given them some sort of signal.

Dantler headed directly for the exit and opted for the 'bus. When he arrived on a new world, he wanted
to see as much as possible as quickly as possible, and he knew he wouldn't be seeing anything at all while
riding in a conveyor tube. The 'bus was a sturdy, tracked conveyance, and a glance at it told a traveler all
he needed to know about travel in the deserts of Llayless. Mountains loomed on all sides, providing a
distant haze of superb beauty. The desert was a disaster of sand dunes and slag heaps. Crossing the
former, the 'bus left a cloud of sand behind. With slag heaps, it was a cloud of dust.

Pummery, the principal commercial city of the world of Llayless, had been almost invisible when the
spaceship was settling in for a landing. It was a complex of massive domes enclosing business buildings,
residences, smelters, and the immense nuclear power plant, with tubes for the network of railway lines
that extended in all directions like spreading tentacles. Domes and tubes were more than half buried in the
shifting sands of a narrow, elongated desert. The spaceport, unfortunately, had to be kept cleared of
sand, and a platoon of dozers worked full time at the task.

The domes and tubes were an afterthought engendered by necessity. In its remote past, which could
have been as long ago as three or four decades, the municipality of Pummery had been a struggling desert
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