"Andre Norton - Ross Murdock 02 - Uncharted Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

immediate channel. Deal with one thing at a time, and that, the one facing
you. We had to have a pilot to lift, and we had to lift soon, very soon, or
lose the ship before making a single venture into space with her.
None of the reputable hiring agencies had available a man who would be
willing--at our wages--to ship out on what would seem a desperate venture,
the more so when I could not offer any voyage bond. This left the rejects,
men black-listed by major lines, written off agency books for some mistake
or crime. And to find such a one I must go down into the Off-port, that part
of the city where even the Patrol and local police went on sufferance and in
couples, where the Guild ruled. To call attention to myself there was asking
for a disagreeable future--kidnaping, mind scanning, all the other illegal
ways of gaining my knowledge. The Guild had a long and accurate memory.
There was a third course. I could throw up everything--turn on my heel and
walk away from the door I was about to activate by thumb pressure on
personal seal, take a position in one of the gem shops (if I could find
one), forget Eet's wild dream. Even throw the stone in my belt into the
nearest disposal to remove the last temptation. In fact, become as ordinary
and law-abiding a citizen as I could.
I was greatly tempted. But I was enough of a Jern not to yield. Instead I
set thumb to the door and at the same time beamed a thought before me in
greeting. As far as I knew, the seals in any caravansary, once set to
individual thumbprints, could not be fooled. But there can always be a first
time and the Guild is notorious for buying up or otherwise acquiring new
methods of achieving results which even the Patrol does not suspect have
been discovered. If we had been traced here, then there just might be a
reception committee waiting beyond. So I tried mind-touch with Eet for
reassurance. What I got kept me standing where I was, thumb to doorplate,
bewildered, then suspicious. Eet was there. I received enough to be sure of
that. We had been mind-coupled long enough for even tenuous linkage to be
clear to my poorer human senses. But now Eet was withdrawn, concentrating
elsewhere. My fumbling attempts to communicate failed.
Only it was not preoccupation with danger, no warn-off. I pressed my thumb
down and watched the door roll back into the wall, intent on what lay
beyond. The room was small, not the cubby of a freeze-class traveler, but
certainly not the space of a Veep suite. The various fixtures were
wall-folded. And now the room was unusually empty, for apparently Eet had
sent every chair, as well as the table, desk, and bed back into the walls,
leaving the carpeted floor bare, a single bracket light going.
A circle of dazzling radiance was cast by that (I noted at once that it had
been set on the highest frequency and a small portion of my mind began
calculating how many minutes of that overpower would be added to our bill).
Then I saw what was set squarely under it and I was really startled.
As was true of all port caravansaries, this one catered to tourists as well
as business travelers. In the lobby was a shop--charging astronomical
prices--where one could buy a souvenir or at least a present for one's
future host or some member of the family. Most of it was, as always, a
parade of eye-catching local handicrafts to prove one had been on Theba,
with odds and ends of exotic imports from other planets to attract the
attention of the less sophisticated traveler. There were always in such
shops replicas of the native fauna, in miniature for the most part. Some