"E. C. Tubb - Stardeath" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tubb E. C)

the warning remained unuttered as he felt a hand grip his throat and the ball of a thumb come to rest just
below his right eye.
"Make a sound and I'll blind you," Varl said. He moved the thumb a little, lifting his index finger to
threaten the other eye. "On your knees. Move!"
"Crazy," the guard said. "There's no need for this. We -- "
"Shut up!" Varl dropped his hand from the other's throat and snatched the needle gun from its
holster. "Up and out!"
"I told you -- "
"Out!" The darts in the gun would not kill, but the weapon itself could crush a skull if swung by a
powerful arm. "Down the passage and head upward. Do it, damn you!"
It was madness, a gamble he could not win. But even so the game was worth playing for the one
slim possibility that, despite all logic, he would be able to get clear and make his way to the open, the
sun, the freedom which was the prize. He had to take the chance no matter what the cost.
They let him climb three levels before gassing him down.
--------
*CHAPTER 2*
SHE was tall, blonde, and blue-eyed, with a good figure and a mouth twisted as if she had tasted
something bad. Her voice and eyes matched her uniform: crisp and cold.
"Kurt Varl, you disappointed me. I'd hoped to find an intelligent man."
Captain Varl."
"Your license was rescinded when you were sentenced to corrective punishment -- for multiple
murder and wanton destruction of private property. Or are you going to protest your innocence?"
"Execution is not murder."
"And you killed in your capacity as captain in order to prevent a mutiny." She shrugged indifferently.
"As I said, Varl, you are a fool."
"And you, Major? What are you?"
"You recognize my uniform?"
"I can read your braid."
"And admit I outrank you?"
"Not where it counts." Abruptly, he was tired of the game. "In the Venegian Sector we had a name
for women like you. They were all well built and good-looking and all had tailored uniforms and high
rank. The only field of battle they ever saw was between the sheets." He caught the hand she swung at
his face, his own fingers digging hard into her wrist. "Whose battleground are you, Major?"
For a moment their eyes met and then, with surprising strength, she jerked her wrist from his grasp.
"An animal," she said bitterly. "I should have expected it. A beast walking on two legs. What else could
have killed nine people and destroyed a valuable cargo? You belong to the Dark Ages."
He made no comment, looking instead at the room, and at the tall window which gave a view of
rolling hills in the far distance, of clouds, and of the ground a long, long way below. The sun was low in
the sky, dying with flaring streamers of crimson and gold, scarlet and amber, pink and orange. The colors
touched his face and highlighted the cheekbones as they accentuated the hollows, dusting the eyes and
giving the whole a resemblance to a pagan mask. Studying it, she thought of primitive idols wreathed in
the smoke of sacrificial fires, their nostrils flared to catch the scent of newly spilled blood.
Then he turned and the moment was gone. He was just a man again, one caught in a vicious trap, the
victim of justice formulated to embrace different circumstances on a different world.
He said flatly, "If you've come to gloat, forget it. Men are dead and I killed them and would again if
the need arose. They were scum and you know it. The courts knew it -- but the cargo belonged to the
Pui-Chi Consortium and reparation had to be made. So I got sentenced and the government paid and
everyone's happy."
"You infer expediency?"
"That and stupidity -- mine. I should have taken what was going and run. Instead, I acted the