"Murray Leinster - Talents,Incorporated" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

overdrive in--hm--three minutes, twenty seconds. Two
others will arrive tomorrow, one at ten minutes after noon,
the other three hours later. The last will arrive the day
after, at about sunrise here."
Bors went a trifle pale.
"I doubt it. It's supposed to be a military secret that such
ships are on the way. Since you know it, I assume that the
Mekinese do, too. In effect, you seem to be a Mekinese
spy. But you can hardly do any more harm! I advise you to
go back to your yacht and leave Kandar immediately. If our
citizens find out you are spies, they will literally tear you to
pieces."
He looked at them icily. The stout man grinned.
"Listen, your h-- Captain, listen to me! The first liner will
report inside of five minutes. That'll be a test. Here's
another. There's a Mekinese heavy cruiser aground on
Kandar right now! It's on the sea bottom fifty fathoms
down, five miles magnetic north-north-east from Cape
Farnell! You can check that! The cruiser's down there to
lob a fusion bomb into your space-fleet when it starts to
take off for the flight you're planning--to get all the
important men on Kandar in one smash! That's Talents,
Incorporated information! It's a free sample. You can verify
it without it costing you anything, and when you want more
and better information--why--we'll be at the spaceport
ready to give it to you. And you will want to call on us!
That's Talents, Incorporated information, too!"
He turned and marched confidently--almost grandly--out
of the room. The girl smiled faintly at Bors.
"He left out something, Captain. That cruiser-- It could
hardly act without information on when to act. So there's a
pair of spies in a little shack on the cape. They've got an
underwater cable going under the sand beach and out
and down to the space-cruiser. They're watching the fleet
on the ground with telescopes. When they see activity
around it, they'll tell the cruiser what to do." Then she
smiled more broadly. "Honestly, it's true! And don't forget
about the liner!"
She followed her father out of the room. Outside, as they
got into the waiting ground-car, she said to her father, "If
he smiled, I think I'd like him."
But Bors did not know that at the time. He would probably
not have paid any attention if he had. Kandar was about to
be taken over by the Mekinese, as his own Tralee had
been ten years before, and other planets before that.
Mekin was making an empire after an ancient tradition,
which scorned the idea of incorporating other worlds into
its own governmental system--which was appalling--but
merely made them subjects and satellites and tributaries.
Bors had been born on Tralee, which he remembered as a