"Eric Frank Russel - Six Worlds Yonder" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russell Eric Frank)

ment. After years of reading what had followed in due course,
he had conceived the notion that all tasks were funny except
when they involved a massacre. "You are ready and eager for
another trip, I trust?"
"I am always ready," said Commodore Leigh. He had out-
grown the eagerness two decades back.
"I have here the latest consignment of scout reports,"
Markham went on. He made a disparaging gesture. "You
know what they're like. Condensed to the minimum and in
some instances slightly mad. Happy the day when we receive
a report detailed with scientific thoroughness."
"You'll get that only from a trained mind," Leigh com-
mented. "Scouts are not scientists. They are oddities who like
roaming the loneliest reaches of space with no company but
their own. Pilot-trained hobos willing to wander at large, take
brief looks and tell what they've seen. Such men are useful
and necessary. Their shortcomings can be made up by those
who follow them."
"Precisely," agreed Markham with suspicious promptness.
"So this is where we want you to do some following."
"What is it this time?"
"We have Boydell's latest report beamed through several
relay-stations. He is way out in the wilds." Markham tapped
the paper irritably. "This particular scout is known as Gabby
Boydell because he is anything but that. He uses words as
if they cost him fifty dollars apiece."
"Meaning he hasn't said enough?" asked Leigh, smiling.
"Enough? He's told us next to nothing!" He let go an
emphatic snort. "Eighteen planets scattered all over the shop
and not a dozen words about each. He discovers a grand
total of eighteen planets in seven previously unexplored sys-
tems and the result doesn't occupy half a page."
"Going at that speed, he wouldn't have time for much
more," Leigh ventured. "You can't write a book about a
world without taking up residence for a while."
"That may be. But these crackpot scouts could do better
and it's time they were told as much." He pointed an accus-
ing finger. "Look at this item. The eleventh planet he visited.
He has named it Pulok for some reason that is probably crazy.
His report employs exactly four words: 'Take it and welcome.'
What do you make of that?"

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Leigh thought it over carefully. "It is inhabitable by hu-
mankind. There is no native opposition, nothing to prevent
us grabbing it. But in his opinion it isn't worth possessing."
"Why, man, why?"
"I don't know, not having been there."