"Andre Norton - Astra 02 - Star Born [4.1]" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

map in the Council Hall.
Each of the colony males was expected to make his man-journey of
discovery sometime between his eighteenth and twentieth year. He went alone or,
if he formed an attachment with one of the mermen near his own age, accompanied
only by his knife brother. And from knowledge so gained the still-small group of
exiles added to and expanded their information about their new home.
Caution was drilled into them. For they were not the first masters
of Astra, nor were they the masters now. There were the ruins left by Those
Others, the race who had populated this planet until their own wars had
completed their downfall. And the mermen, with their traditions of slavery and
dark beginnings in the experimental pens of the older race, continued to insist
that across the sea—on the unknown western continent—Those Others still held
onto the remnants of a degenerate civilization. Thus the explorers from Homeport
went out by ones and twos and used the fauna of the land as a means of gathering
information.
Hoppers could remember yesterday only dimly, and instinct took care
of tomorrow. But what happened today sped from hopper to hopper and could warn
by mind touch both merman and human. If one of the dread snake-devils of the
interior was on the hunting trail, the hoppers sped the warning. Their vast
curiosity brought them to the fringe of any disturbance, and they passed the
reason for it along. Dalgard knew there were a thousand eyes at his service
whenever he wanted them. There was little chance of being taken by surprise, no
matter how dangerous this journey north might be.
“The city—” He formed the words in his mind even as he spoke them
aloud. “How far are we now from it?”
The merman hunched his slim shoulders in the shrug of his race.
“‘Three days’ travel, maybe five. And it”—though his furred face displayed no
readable emotion, the sensation of distaste was plain—”was one of the accursed
ones. To such we have not returned since the days of falling fire—”
Dalgard was well acquainted with the ruins which lay not many miles
from Homeport. And he knew that that sprawling, devastated metropolis was not
taboo to the mermen. But this other mysterious settlement he had recently heard
of was still shunned by the sea people. Only Sssuri and a; few others of
youthful years would consider a journey to explore the long-forbidden section
their traditions labeled as dangerous land.
The belief that he was about to venture into questionable territory
had made Dalgard evasive when he reported his plans to the Elders three days
earlier. But since such trips were, by tradition, always thrusts into the
unknown, they had not questioned him too much. All in all, Dalgard thought,
watching Sssuri flake the firm pink flesh from the fish, he might deem himself
lucky and this quest ordained. He went off to hack out armloads of grass and
fashion the sleep mats for the sun-warmed ground.
They had eaten and were lounging in content on the soft sand just
beyond the curl of the waves when Sssuri lifted his head from his folded arms as
if he listened. Like all those of his species, his vestigial ears were hidden
deep in his fur and no longer served any real purpose; the mind touch served him
in their stead. Dalgard caught his thought, though what had aroused his
companion was too rare a thread to trouble his less acute senses.
“Runners in the dark—”
Dalgard frowned. “It is still sun time. What disturbs them?”