"Andre Norton - Moon Singer 1 - Moon of Three Rings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

home, nor do some ships possess a home port, but wander always.

So it is that among us the ship itself is our only planet, and we look
upon all without its shell as alien. Although not in this sense are we
xenophobic, for it is part of our nature that we have a strong bent toward
exploration and acceptance of the outer.

Now we are born to the trade, for families live within the larger ships, it
being decided long since that such was better for us than casual and
transitory connections in ports which might lead to a man's losing his
ship. The big space-borne ports are small cities in themselves, each
operating as a central mart for a sector where large deals are carried out,
where those who have a mate and children may enjoy a kind of home life
between voyages.

But the Lydis was a bachelor ship of the D class, intended for risky rim
trading where only men without ties would venture. And I, Krip Vorlund,
was well content to so set my feet on the ladder of trade. For my father had
not returned from his last voyage years back. And my mother, after the
custom of the Traders, had married again within two years and followed
her new mate elsewhere. So I had no one to speak up for me at the time of
assignment.

Our captain was Urban Foss, well regarded as a coming man, though
young and sometimes thought to be a shade reckless. But that suited his
crew, who were willing to have a leader who might by some gamble
advance them well into the ranks of those who had solid credit at the trade
center. Juhel Lidj was the cargomaster, and my only quarrel with him,
though he was no light taskmaster, was that he guarded some of his trade
secrets jealously, leaving me to ferret hints for myself. But perhaps that
was the best way of training, putting me ever on the alert when I was on
duty, and giving me opportunity to think much when I was not being
official.

We had made two good voyages before we landed on Yiktor, and
undoubtedly we felt that we were perhaps better than we were. However,
caution is never forgotten on a Free Trader. After we planeted, before we
opened hatches, Foss had us all in to listen to the guide tape carrying all
the warnings for this world.

The only port, such as it was—for this was truly a frontier world—lay
outside Yrjar, a city as far as Yiktor knew cities, in the middle of a large
northern land mass. We had timed our arrival carefully for the great trade
fair, a meeting of merchants and populace from all over the entire planet,
held at two-planet-years intervals at the end of the fall harvest season.

Like fairs on many other worlds, this gathering had once had, and still
possessed as a pallid shadow, religious significance, being the supposed
date when an ancient folk hero had met and vanquished some demoniacal
enemy to save his people, died as a result of his exertions, and thereafter