"Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Red Peril" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

There were no words spoken; a dozen buccaneers clanked methodically away toward the aft bold,
and one, a slighter figure, stood grimly guarding the lock. In five minutes they were filing back, dragging
whatever loot they had found, with the queer movement of inertia without weight—much as if they floated
the objects through water.
Ten Eyck saw the cases of xixtchil pods, valuable as so many diamonds, disappear into the lock;
and the seventeen crated ingots of Venusian silver followed. He swore under his breath as he recognized
the casket of emeralds from the mines in the Dutch Alps of Venus, and wondered blasphemously how
they had managed to crack the Aardkin's safe with neither torch nor explosive.
Glancing into the purser's office, he saw a queer, jagged hole in the big steel box, that looked more
as if it had rusted or simply broken away than as if it had been cut. Then the freebooters were silently
passing back to their vessel, having neither addressed nor molested officers, crew, or passengers.
Except, perhaps, for one: among the group of watchers was young Frank Keene, American
radiologist and physicist returning from the solar-analysis stations of Patrick's Peak in the Mountains of
Eternity. He had edged close to the air lock, and now, as the departing marauders passed through, he
suddenly leaned forward with narrowed eyes, and peered boldly into the cloudy visor of the guard.
"Huh!" he mid. "A redhead, eh?"
The guard said nothing, but raised a steel-guantleted hand. The metal thumb and forefinger bit
viciously into Keene's suntanned nose, and he was thrust violently back into the crowd, with two spots of
blood welling from the abused organ.
Keen grunted in pain. "O.K., fellow," he said stolidly. "I'll see you again some day.”
The guard spoke at last in a voice that clinked out metallically from the helmet's diaphragm. "When
you do, there'd better be two of you." Then this figure followed the rest; the outer lock clanged shut; the
magnets released the gangway's grip; and the Red Peri, agile as a swallow and swift as a comet at
perihelion, flared into the black void.
Beside Keene sounded the voice of Captain Ten Eyck. "What a ship! Mynheer Keene, is that not a
ship—that Red Peri?"
He was still exclaiming over it at intervals during the laborious task of laying a new landing course;
and when, an hour later, a blunt little League rocket appeared in answer to Hawkin's call, he informed its
officers flatly that the pirate was hopelessly beyond reach. "Even if your fat beeste of a boat could match
its acceleration, which it couldn't."

A year later Frank Keene had almost completely forgotten the Red Peri and the red-headed pirate,
though occasionally, during the interval, mention of the famous marauder had brought his experience to
mind. After all, when a freebooter has scoured the skyways for nearly fifteen years without capture, he
becomes something of a legend, a figure of heroic proportions. Papers and broadcasts give daily
references to him, and he is blamed for, or perhaps credited with, many a feat performed by some
less-celebrated desperado.
The lair of the Red Peri remained a mystery, though League ships scoured asteroids, the far side of
the desolate Moon, and even the diminutive satellites of Mars. The swift pirate, striking invariably as his
victim inched gingerly through some planet's gravitational field, came and went untouched.
But Frank Keene had little time at the moment for consideration of the famous freebooter. He and his
companion, fifty-five year old Solomon Nestor of the Smithsonian, were out where few men had ever
been, and in a predicament that was perhaps unique. They were dropping their rocket Limbo toward the
rugged, black disc of Puto, two billion miles from home, and they were not happy about it.
"I tell you," growled Keene, "we're got to land. Do you think I'm settling on this chunk of coal from
choice? We've got to make repairs. We can't navigate with one stern jet gone, unless you have a notion
to fly in circles."
Old Solomon was a marvel on hard radiations, stellar chemistry, and astro-physics, but hardly an
engineer. He said plaintively, "I don't see why we can't zigzag."
 "Bah! I told you why. Didn't I spend five hours figuring out the time it'd take to reach the nearest