"Harry Harrison - Deathworld 2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

hover, then drop stern first with a grating crash. The shock absorbers took up
most of the blow, but the ship had bent a support and stood at a decided
angle.

"Terrible landing," the radio operator grunted, and turned back to his
controls, uninterested in the stranger. Pyrrans have no casual curiosity.

Jason was the direct opposite. Curiosity had brought him to Pyrrus,
involved him in the planet-wide war, and almost killed him. Now curiosity
drove him towards the ship. He hesitated a moment as he realized that the
radio operator had not understood his conversation with the strange pilot, and
could not know that he planned to enter the ship. If he was walking into
trouble he could expect no help.
 "I can take care of myself," he said to himself with a laugh, and when
he raised his hand his gun leaped out of the power holster strapped to the
inside of his wrist and slammed into his hand. His index finger was already
contracted, and when the guardless trigger hit it a single shot banged out,
blasting the distant dartweed he had aimed at.

He was good, and he knew it. He would never be as good as the native
Pyrrans, born and raised on this deadly planet, with its doubled gravity, but
he was faster and more deadly than any offworlder could possibly be. He could
handle any trouble that might develop-and he expected trouble. In the past he
had had many differences of opinion with the police and various other
planetary authorities, though he could think of none of them who would bother
to send police across interstellar space to arrest him.

Why had this ship come?

There was an identification number painted on the space/s stern, and a
rather familiar heraldic device. Where had he seen that before?

His attention was distracted by the opening of the outer door of the
airlock and he stepped inside. Once it had sealed behind him, he closed his
eyes while the supersonics and ultraviolet of the decon cycle did their best
to eliminate the various minor life forms that had come in on his clothes.
They finally finished, and when the inner door began to open he pressed tight
against it, ready to jump through as soon as it had opened wide enough. If
there were any surprises he wanted them to be his.

When he went through the door he realized he was falling. His gun sprang
into his hand and he had it half raised towards the man in the spacesuit who
sat in the control chair.

"Gas . . ." was all he managed to say, and he was out before he hit the
metal deck.

Consciousness returned, accompanied by a thudding headache that made
Jason wince when he moved, and when he opened his eyes the pain of the light
made him screw them shut again. Whatever the drug was that had knocked him