"Harry Harrison - Planet Of No Return" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

all of our assignments deal only with cultures that are in trouble, societies
on planets that have been cut off from the mainstream of human contact for
thousands of years. We don't go near newly rediscovered planets—that's the job
of Planetary Survey. They go in first, then turn their records over to us.
They're a rough outfit, I did four years with Plansurv before I transferred to
Culrel."

The Smell of Death

23

He smiled grimly. "I thought this new job would be easier. Plansurv has a
problem and they have asked us for help. In cases like this we always say yes.
Are you ready to look at these records now?"

"I'll get a viewer from our cabin," Brion said.

Carver nodded wearily, too tired to speak.

"Would you like me to order you something?" Lea asked as Brion went out of the
lounge.

"Yes, thank you, a drink of some kind. I'll wash down a pill with it—feel
better in a few minutes. But no alcohol, I can't take any of that yet."

She felt his eyes on her as she phoned passenger control and gave her order to
the computer. When she had finished the call she put back the phone and turned
sharply to face him.

"Well—do you like what you see?"

"Sorry. I didn't mean to stare. But I read your history in the records. I
never met anyone from Earth before."

"What did you expect—two heads?"

"I said that I was sorry. Before I left my home world and went into space I
really believed that the whole story of Earth was just another religious
myth."

"Well, now you can see for yourself that we are real undernourished flesh and
blood. Underfed citizens of an overcrowded and worn out planet. Probably just
what we deserve, I imagine you would say."

"No. I might have at one time. No more. I'm sure that the Earth Empire was
guilty of a number of excesses, just the sort of thing we read about in our
school books. No one's in doubt about that. But all of that's just history
now, ancient history thousands of years in the past. What is of much greater
impor-