"Andre Norton - Cat's Eye - uc" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

Their jewels, their ultrafashionable dress, their eye-
catching coiffures had all been designed as advertise-
ments to attract general attention.

But Kyger, if this was Kyger, was no such starburst.
His muscular body was covered with a hora-silk half
tunic and kilt, but the color was a dark and sober
blue, and he wore no jewels at all. On his right wrist
was the broad service bracelet of a veteran spacer
with at least two constellations starring its sweep,
while his skull was completely shaven as if to accom-
modate the helmet of a scout-ship man. The bareness
of that deeply tanned stretch of skin made the red,
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puckered acar down along his right ear the more
noticeable. Troy wondered fleetingly why he chose to
keep that disfiguring brand; plastic surgery could have
erased it completely.

The other regarded Troy for a long moment, his
stare both as aloof and as searching as that the yellow
man had used through the door panel.

"The assignor reported you as Norden," he remarked,
but gave the planet name a slight accent new to Troy.
"I would rather have thought Midgard—"

Troy met him eye to eye. This man had a spacer's
knowledge of racial types and other worlds right
enough.

"I was born on Norden—"

The other might not have heard him. "Midgard—or

even Terra—"

Troy flushed. "Norden," he repeated firmly. Lang
Horan's father had been from Midgard, right enough.
Before that—well, who traced any planet-pioneering
family back through generations and star systems to

the first hop?

"Norden. And you think that you know something
about animals." Those gray eyes, cold as space between
far-flung suns, dropped from Troy's face to the belt
with its lovingly polished silver studs. "Range Master,