"Edmond Hamilton - Valley of Creation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

"Yes, I was drunk last night," he said harshly. "And I'll be drunk again tonight and
tomorrow night also."
A patient voice sighed from the doorway. "Not tomorrow night, Captain Nelson. No."
Nelson turned. It was Li Kin who stood in the doorway. He made an absurd figure, his
scrawny little body swathed in a major's uniform far too big for him. His gentle, fine-planed
face was sagging with weariness and behind his thick-lensed spectacles his black eyes
held sadness.
"A full column of the Chinese Red Army is on its way here from Nun-Yan," he said. "It will
be here by tomorrow noon."
Nick Sloan's tawny eyes narrowed slightly. "That's pretty fast action. But it's only what we
expected."
Yes, Eric Nelson thought heavily. It was only what they had expected.
They five had been staff officers for Yu Chi, a onetime minor warlord in the old China
who had fled the
8 THE VALLEY OF CREATION
country when the Communists took over. For years, Yu Chi had made his base in the
no-man's-land of wild mountains that thrust up like a fist between China, Burma and Tibet, a
region where boundaries and sovereignties were shadowy things. Every so often the old
warlord, posing as a liberator, had made a foray which pretended to be a guerrilla action
against the Reds but which was really a looting raid.
Of the five of them, Li Kin was the only one with any patriotic motives. The others were
frankly mercenaries, picking up whatever they could in the troubles of southeast Asia.
Nelson had been such a mercenary for ten years, ever since the Korean War ended and he
decided that he liked adventure too much to go home. Nick Sloan had been in Asia nearly
as long. Van Voss and the little Cockney were fugitive criminals, but tough fighting-men.
But now the five were at the end of their rope. Yu Chi had gone on one "liberation" raid
too many, and had walked into a tiger-trap of Red troops here. They had won the battle, and
the town. But Yu Chi was dead, his motley army had broken up, and when Communist
reinforcements reached the village, there would be short shrift for five mercenaries.
"We've got to get out of here by tomorrow morning or we're cooked," Nick Sloan said
curtly.
Lefty Wister had awakened and stood, a cigarette drooping laxly from his thin lips. Van
Voss was stretching hugely in his bunk, scratching his enormous paunch as he listened.
"Where can we go without running into the bloody Red troops?" whined the little
Cockney.
Nelson shrugged. "North, east and south we'd walk right into their hands. West there's
only the Kunlun Mountains, and without a guide we'd merely dodge around in there until the
tribesmen got us."
Li Kin raised his tired head. "That reminds me. A
ALIEN DREAM ' 9
tribesman from those mountains wanted to talk to me last night. Something about hiring
us to fight for his people."
Van Voss grunted. "Some verdonmtte Trans-Tibetan tribe that wants a few
machine-guns to crush their neighbors."
Sloan's hard face was thoughtful. "It might be an out, though. In those mountains, if we
knew our way, we'd be safe. Where is the man?"
"Still waiting outside, I think," said the Chinese. "I'll get him." He went heavily toward the
doorway.
Nelson looked after him without interest, simply because he was sick of looking at
Sloan and Van Voss and Wister.