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

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"You used that?" He nodded toward the stunner
still lying by the knife-scored pillar.

"Yes."

"Good enough." Kyger crossed to retrieve the weapon
and hand it to the Swatzerkan. "I witness my man
used this in defense of my goods," he said, using the
formal, responsibility-assuming phrase.

"It is so noted, Merchant."

Troy stared at Kyger. Such a move was made on the
behalf of a full-time employee, a subcitizen, not for a
day laborer out of the Dipple. Did Kyger mean—?

But this was no time to ask questions. An accom-
modation flitter set down on the clear oval beyond the
pillars, and Troy helped Kyger move the cage and the
two crates into it. There was still nothing from the
transport box. One could almost imagine that he had
dreamed that questing thought process. But Troy's
curiosity pricked the more fiercely after the events of
the past half hour.

Any pets offered to the wife of Var suk Sark would
indeed be the most exotic as well as the most expensive
obtainable. Suk Sark was of one of the Fifty Noble
Families on Wolf Three. But the Gentle Fern San duk
Var was not accepted in that lineage-conscious assem-
blage. Gossip was undoubtedly correct in ascribing
the present residence of the Var household on Korwar
to that fact. One could not buy one's way into the
Fifty, no matter how limitless was the pile of credits one
could dip into. But there were other circles one could
26

impress with one's importance—many such on Korwar.

Troy wondered how suk Sark enjoyed running his
autocratic government of the Sweepers from so far
away. The Sweepers in the galaxy as a whole were
small fry, a collection of six minor solar systems, and
they never ventured too far into the conflicts between
the real lords of space. But sometimes even such small
organizations had moments when their allegiance or