"Jean and Jeff Sutton - The Beyond " - читать интересную книгу автора (Sutton Jean and Jeff)

Administration and, of course, the High Council of Ten which, headed by the
Imperator, administered the affairs of the Federation's Ten Sectors with their
almost three thousand inhabited planets.
But the village clung to the edge of life.
Despite periodic shipments of "dangerous elements," its size remained
almost static; only its graveyard grew -- a small plot which became an acre,
and then two acres of round white river stones which marked the closely packed
graves.
Lying at the edge of a towering forest of weeping agora trees, the
village huddled defensively against the cruel climate, at times all but
lifeless; and yet life struggled on, a spark which even the planet's harsh
climate couldn't extinguish.
Then, in GY 3180, an incident occurred that brought Engo under the
immediate scrutiny of the galactic overlords; a crisis loomed. In reality, the
crisis started when a tramp freighter, violating the prohibition against
commerce with the exile planet, put into Engo to trade utensils, tools, and
cloth for the thick, furry catmel pelts so much in demand by the women of the
three thousand planets.
The freighter was the Cosmic Wind.


One

GORDON CROMWELL, captain of the Cosmic Wind, gulped noisily from a
silver flask as he watched the dusky orange glow of Engo in the starport. For
two days, since coming out of the time stream, the planet had grown steadily
larger and -- in his mind -- more baleful. The exile planet. The planet of
mutants, telepaths. Planet of death...Orange like its sun, orange like its
racing moon -- orange and deadly and beyond the law.
Cromwell regarded it philosophically.
Beyond the law? He chuckled at the thought. Perhaps to the rest of the
Federation, but not to him. The Cosmic Wind went where the profit lay, and the
profit lay there, on Engo, where thick, furry catmel pelts were to be had, as
many as the Cosmic Wind could carry. And no competition! The profit in the
black markets of the Third Sector alone was a thousandfold, and the Federation
be cursed, he thought. A trader's business was to trade.
Aside from that, he made additional profit carrying cargo to the planet
for a man known only to him as "Mr. Olaf." That cargo was given to the
inhabitants free, a charitable attitude which Cromwell considered detrimental
to the spirit of trade. Not that he objected; the space which it occupied
returned a fair fee; he had to admit that was better than empty space, which
returned nothing.
At times Cromwell found himself vaguely perturbed over Mr. Olaf. But, he
told himself, the man was merely a do-gooder, a breed that appeared to abound
on the fringes of misery, eyeing the less fortunate much as a jackal eyes a
potential meal. In more honest moments, he admitted that the man must be a
hidden telepath, or perhaps even a member of the mutant underground which
people spoke of in whispers. Yet he couldn't complain, he reflected. It all
added up to profit.
"She's a rarin' back on her heels," Snorkel called from behind him.