" Perry Rhodan 0051 - (43) Life Hunt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)

 Marshall suddenly jerked his head. Apprehension flashed momentarily in his eyes. Then the emotionless
Springer expression returned to his face. "Rohun," he said, "the Ara Secret Service hasn’t been sleeping!
You’re about to have a visit from the same agent who showed up in my store today! He’s already in the
ship and on the way to your cabin! Where can I hide in this room?"

Rohun, the old daredevil and ice-cold calculator, allowed a few inarticulate sounds to escape his lips. He
already knew that Marshall had a sixth sense for danger but that Marshall’s sense could be so explicit
was something completely new to him.

"Get out through here!" exclaimed Rohun excitedly, standing by a small door.

"No—I want to stay in your cabin, Rohun. The Ara doesn’t know I’m on board! Quick—find a place
for me to hide!"

The situation was not at all to Rohun’s liking. Like all Springers, he gave little credence to the
supernatural and what Marshall was now doing struck him has nothing but supernatural. Even so, he gave
in under John Marshall’s forceful gaze—but only reluctantly.

"Don’t make him suspicious," Marshall warned the Springer captain. "He won’t ask too many
questions!" With that, Marshall lay down on his stomach and crawled under Rohun’s bunk, which
concealed him perfectly.

Not long after, a clan member entered Rohun’s cabin and asked the captain if he would permit one
Huxul from the Alien Control Commission to come in. "What else can I do?" Rohun demanded, resigned.

Huxul, the Ara who had bought the pairs of gegerutavis and hiobargulloos in Ixt’s shop, pushed his way
into the cabin. "Are you Springer Captain Rohun? If so, then let me tell you I don’t believe for one minute
this nonsense about a defective audio-video connection! What’s more, I’m telling you that—"

If Rohun was not precisely overjoyed by the visit from an officer in the Ara secret service, neither was
he frightened. He had no mind to suffer fools gladly. Or at all, for that matter.

He interrupted the visitor sharply. "You can believe what you want but if it doesn’t please you to talk to
me in a civilized tone, I’m going to have you thrown overboard! Please sit down over there."

He offered Huxul the same seat which John Marshall had occupied just moments before.

Huxul was hardly seated when, with a malicious grin, he asked, "And where is he now, your visitor who
was just sitting in this chair a few minutes ago?"

Rohun was not visibly disturbed by the question. "Huxul, I’m not an Ara! I’m a Galactic Trader! My
ship is a world in itself. On board my ship, no one but the captain asks questions, and I’m the captain.
And it would certainly never occur to me to ask a question as stupid and offensive as the one you just
asked!"

"I didn’t mean it like that!" Huxul said hastily and with surprising friendliness. He had suddenly become
another person entirely: polite, amiable and rather negligent about his duty. Rohun began to wonder.

He had no inkling of John Marshall’s psychobeamer. The instrument was trained on the Ara at full
intensity, persuading him to consider his mission fulfilled and to be nothing but a polite conversationalist.