"Vance, Jack - Gaean Reach - Demon Princes 02 - The Killing Machine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

Gersen invested himself with various tools of the weasel trade,
winched down his platform flyer, set forth to the west.

The first night Gersen reconnoitered Skouse. The streets were un-
paved and aimless; there was a commissary, several warehouses, a
garage, three churches, two temples, and a tramway with spindly
tracks leading down toward the ocean. He located the inn; a square
three-story structure built of stone, fiber panels, and timber. Skouse
was a dull town, exuding a sense of boredom, sluggishness, and
ignorance; Gersen assumed the population to have little more status
than serfdom.

He concentrated his attention on the inn, where Mr. Hoskins,
if he were present, would almost certainly take up residence. He
was unable to find a window to look through; the stone walls re-
sisted his eavesdrop microphone. And he dared not speak to any of
the patrons who at various times during the night staggered out
and away through the twisting streets of Skouse.

The second night he had no better success. However, across
from the inn, he found a vacated structure: apparently at one time
a machine-shop or fabricating plant, but now given over to dust
and small white insects unnervtngly like minuscule monkeys. Here
Gersen ensconced himself and through the entirety of the greenish-
yellow day kept watch upon the inn. The life of the town moved
past him; dour men and stolid women wearing dark jackets, loose
flapping trousers of brown or maroon, black hats with upturned
brims, went about their affairs. They spoke in a broad flat dialect
that Gersen could never hope to imitate; so died a tentative plan
to secure native-style garments and enter the inn. In the late after-
noon, strangers came into town: spacemen by their costumes, from
a ship that apparently had only Just landed. Gersen fought off
drowsiness with an antisleep pill. As soon as the sun descended,
bringing a mud-colored twilight, he left his hiding place and hur-
ried through the dim streets to the spaceport. Sure enough, a large
cargo-ship had put in and was now discharging bales and crates
from its hold. Even as Gersen watched, three members of the crew
left the ship, crossed the floodlit fore-area, showed passes to the
guard at the wicket, and turned down the road toward town.

180

THE DEMON PRINCKS

Gersen joined them. He gave them "Good evening," which
they returned with civility, and inquired the name of their ship.
"The Ivan Garfang^ he was told, "out of Chalcedon."
"Chalcedon, Earth?"

"The same."