"Murray Leinster - The Duplicators" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

He threw on the heater switch so he could see out the ports and observe the sun which shone on Trent. Instantly an
infuriated bellow came up from below. i
"Turn off the heat!" raged Thistlethwaite from below. Turn it off!"
"But the ports are frosted," Link called back. "I need to see out! We need the heaters!"
"I was sittin' on one! Turn 'em off!"
A door clanged below. Link shrugged. If Thistlethwaite
had to sit on a heater, the heater shouldn't be on. Delay was indicated.
He wasn't worried. The mood of tranquility and repose he'd waked with still stayed with him. Naturally! His current
situation might have seemed disturbing to somebody else, but to a man who'd just left the planet Glaeth, with its strictly
murderous fauna and flora and climatic conditions, to be aboard a merely leaking spaceship of creaking antiquity was
restful. That it was only licensed to travel to a junk yard for scrapping seemed no cause for worry. That it was bound on a
mysterious errand instead seemed interesting. With no cares whatever, Link was charmed to find himself in a situation
where practically anything was more than likely to happen.
He thought restfully of not being on Glaeth. There were animals there which looked like rocks and acted like stones until
one got within reach of remarkably extensible hooked claws. There were trees which dripped a corrosive fluid on any
moving creature that disturbed them. There were gigantic flying things against which the only defense was concealment,
and things which tunneled underground and made traps into which anything heavier than a rabbit would drc>]5 as the
ground gave way beneath it. And there was the climate. In the area in which the best finds of carynths had been made, there
was no record of rain having ever fallen, and noon temperature in the most favorable season hovered around a hundred
forty in the shade. But it was the only world on which carynths were to be found. The carynth-prospectors who landed
there, during the most favorable season, of course, sometimes got rich. Much more often they didn't. Only forty per cent of
those set aground at the beginning of the prospecting season met the buy-boat which came for them at its close. Link had
been one of that lucky minority. Naturally he did not feel alarm on the Glamorgan. He'd almost gotten used to GlaethI So
he waited peace-
fully until Thisthlethwaite said it was all right to turn on the heaters and melt the frost off the ports.
He began to set up for astrogation. The coordinates for Trent would go into the computer, and then the coordinates for the
ship's "-destination. The computer would figure the course between them and its length in parsecs and fractions of parsecs.
One would drive on that course. One could, if it was desirable, look for possible ports of call on the way. Link took down
the Directory to set up the first figures.
He happened to notice a certain consequence of the Directory's newness. It was the only un-shabby, un-worn object on the
ship. But even it showed a grayish, well-thumbed line on the edge of certain pages which had been often referred to. The
grayishness should be a guide to the information about Trent, as the Glamorgan's latest port of call. Link opened the
grayest page, pleased with himself for his acuteness.
But Trent wasn't listed on that page. Trent wasn't even in that part of the book. The heading of this particular chapter of
listings was, "Non-Cluster Planets Between Huyla and Glaire." It described the maverick solar systems not.on regular
trade-routes and requiring long voyages from commercial spaceports if anybody was to reach them. People rarely wanted
to.
Link stared. He found signs that this had been repeatedly referred to by somebody with engine-oil on his fingers. One page
had plainly been read and re-read and re-read. The margin was darkened as if an oily thumb had held a place there while
the item was gloated over.
From any normal standpoint it was not easy to understand.
"SORD" said the Directory. There followed the galactic coordinates to three places of decimals. "Yel. sol-type approx. 1.4
sok mass, mny faculae all times, spectrum—"
The spectrum-symbols could be skipped. If one wanted to be sure that a particular sun was such-and-such, one would
take a spectrophoto and compare it with the Directory: Otherwise the spectrum was for the birds. Link labored over the
abbreviations that compilers of reference books use to make things difficult.
"3rd. pi. blved. hob. ox atm. 2/3 sea nml brine, usual icecaps cloud-systems hab. est. 1."
Then came the interesting part. In the clear language that informative books use with such reluctance, he read:
"This planet is said to have been colonized from Surheil 11 some centuries since, and may be inhabited but no spaceport is
known to exist. The last report on this planet was from a spaceyacht some two centuries ago. The yacht called down asking