"Andre Norton - Solar Queen 7 - A Mind For Trade" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

There was no time for words; a moment later two small
black-and-white blurs rocketed through the passageway, followed by
Dane's new apprentice, Tooe, a Rigelian hybrid they'd found on the vast
habitat called the Garden of Harmonious Exchange. Barely child-size, her
bluish skin shining with exertion, she moved with a peculiar flat-footed
grace in the pseudo-gravity of hyper, now set to the .85 standard of their
destination.

Dane looked down at Alpha and Omega, the ship's cats, and then into
Tooe's huge yellow eyes, waiting for her to catch her breath. And, he
admitted ruefully, avoiding Ali's accusatory gaze.

Tooe and the cats obviously had been playing some kind of game. The
little hybrid seemed to deal well with the adaptive gee shifts; better than
the rest of the crew with the mi-crogravity adaptation shift mandated by
Craig Tau after their experiences on Exchange. Tooe was well adapted to
the variable gravity of that vast construct, which was a home to humans,
the insectlike Kanddoyd, and the heavy-world Shver.

The rest of the crew wasn't—Terran-descent humans preferred planets,
like Hesprid IV, now less than a day away. But they were far beyond the
Terran sphere of influence now, and much of their trading would be on the
cylindrical habitats of Kanddoyd space. Hence both ships observed a
complex cycle of gravity—actually the pseudo-gravity of hyper—to
accustom the rest of the crew to a range of weight-mass ratios.

"Hear screech, me," Tooe said.

"Sorry." AH smiled wryly. "I'll have to ask Rip what he's been slipping
into our rations—"

"I resent that! No one seems to think my cookery is all that great, but
no one has been poisoned yet." Rip Shannon and Jasper Weeks appeared
side by side, a tall, handsome, dark figure and a short, pale one, both
dressed for duty in their brown Free Trader uniforms. Despite Rip's joking
tone his expression was concerned, as was Jasper's.

Ali said, "You couldn't have heard me yelling in my sleep all the way
from the control deck."

Rip shook his head.

"Heard you-here." Jasper tapped his forehead.

"Tooe hear you, in hydrolab." Tooe's crest flattened out as she pointed
round the corner. She touched her ear. "Bad dream, Ali Kamil?"

"Bad dream, Tooe," Ali said with a faint smile.

"Second one," Tooe replied, her pupils slitting suddenly. "You yell two