"Anderson, Poul - Nicholas Van Rijn 01 - The Man who Counts (War of the Wing-Men)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

Van Rijn took out a blaster.

"You mean to fight your way clear?" hissed Wace. "You can't!" He tried to step between Sandra and the menace of weapons which suddenly ringed them in. "They'll fill us with arrows beforeЧ"

"I know, I know," growled Van Rijn sotto voce. "When will you young pridesters learn, just because he is old and lonely, the boss does not yet have teredos in the brain? You keep back, boy, and when trouble breaks loose, hit the deck and dig a hole."

"What? ButЧ"

Van Rijn turned a broad back on him and said in broken Drak'ho, with servile eagerness: "Here a Е how you call it? Е thing. It makes fire. It burn-um holes, by Joe."

"A portable flame throwerЧthat small?" For a moment, an edge of terror sharpened T'heonax's voice.

"I told you," said Delp, "we can gain more by dealing honorably with them. By the Lodestar, I think we could get them home, too, if we really tried!"

"You might wait till I'm dead, Delp, before taking the Admiralty," said Syranax. If he meant it as a joke, it fell like a bomb. The nearer sailors, who heard it, gasped. The household warriors touched their bows and blowguns. Rodonis sa Axollono spread her wings over her children and snarled. Deckhand females, jammed into the forecastle, let out a whimper of half-comprehending fear.

Delp himself steadied matters. "Quiet!" he bawled. "Belay there! Calm down! By all the devils in the Rainy Stars, have these creatures driven us crazy?"

"See," chattered Van Rijn, "take blaster Е we call-um blaster Е pull-um hereЧ"

The ion beam stabbed out and crashed into the mainmast. Van Rijn yanked it away at once, but it had already made a gouge centimeters deep in that tough wood. Its blue-white flame licked across the deck, whiffed a coiled cable into smoke, and took a section out of the rail, before he released the trigger.

The Drak'honai roared!

It was minutes before they had settled back into the shrouds or onto the decks; curiosity seekers from nearby craft still speckled the sky. However, they were technologically sophisticated in their way. They were excited rather than frightened.

"Let me see that!" T'heonax snatched at the gun.

"Wait, Wait, good sir, wait." Van Rijn snapped open the chamber, in a set of movements screened by his thick hands, and popped out the charge. "Make-um safe first. There."

T'hoeonax turned it over and over. "What a weapon!" he breathed. "What a weapon!"

Standing there in a frosty sweat, waiting for Van Rijn to spoon up whatever variety of hell he was cooking, Wace still managed to reflect that the Drak'honai were overestimating. Natural enough, of course. But a gun of this sort would only have a serious effect on ground-fighting tacticsЧand the old sharper was coolly disarming all the blasters anyway, no uninstructed Diomedean was going to get any value from themЧ

"I make safe," Van Rijn burbled. "One, two, three, four, five I make safe Е Four? Five? Six?" He began turning over the piled-up clothes, blankets, heaters, campstove, and other equipment. "Where other three blasters?"

"What other three?" T'heonax stared at him.

"We have six." Van Rijn counted carefully on his fingers. "Ja, six. I give-um all to good sir Delp here."

"WHAT?"

Delp leaped at the human, cursing. "That's a lie! There were only three, and you've got them there!"

"Help!" Van Rijn scuttled behind T'heonax. Delp's body clipped the admiral's son. Both Drak'honai went over in a whirl of wings and tails.

"He's plotting mutiny!" screamed T'heonax.

Wace threw Sandra to the deck and himself above her. The air grew dense with missiles.