"Blish, James - Earth of Hours" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blish James)

improve the total ignorance in which they had been kept
till now. Luckily, they were not much given to asking ques-
tions of a strategic sort; like impressed spacehands every-
where, the huge mass of the Matriarchy's interstellar holdings
meant nothing to them but endlessly riding the Standing
Wave, with battle and death lurking at the end of every
jump. Luckily also, they were inclined to trust Oberholzer,
if only for the low cunning he had shown in keeping most
of them alive, especially in the face of unusually Crimean
orders from the bridge.
This time Oberholzer would need every ounce of trust and
erg of obedience they would give him. Though he never ex-
pected anything but the worst, he had a queer cold feeling
that this time he was going to get it. There were hardly
any data to go on yet, but there had been something about
Calle that looked persuasively like the end of the line.
Very few of the forty men in the wardroom even looked
up as Oberholzer entered. They were checking their gear
in the dismal light of the fluorescents, with the single-mind-
edness of men to whom a properly wound gun-tube coil, a
properly set face-shield gasket, a properly fueled and focused
vaulting jet, have come to mean more than parents, children,
retirement pensions, the rule of law, or the logic of empire.
The only man to show any flicker of interest was Sergeant
Cassiriras was normal, since he was Oberholzer's under-
studyand he did no more than look up from over the
straps of his antigas suit and say, "Well?"
"Well," Oberholzer said, "now hear this."
There was a sort of composite jingle and clank as the
men lowered their gear to the deck or put it aside on their
bunks.
"We're investing a planet called Calle in the Canes
Venatici cluster," Oberholzer said, sitting down on an olive-
drab canvas pack stuffed with lysurgic acid grenades. "A
cruiser called the Assam Dragonyou were with her on her
shakedown, weren't you, Himber?touched down here ten
years ago with a flock of tenders and got swallowed up.
They got two or three quick yells for help out and that was
thatnothing anybody could make much sense of, no wea-
pons named or description of the enemy. So here we are,
loaded for the kill."
"Wasn't any Galley in command of the Assam Dragon
when I was aboard," Himber said doubtfully.
"Nah. Place was named for the astronomer who spotted
her, from the rim of the cluster, a hundred years ago,"
Oberholzer said. "Nobody names planets for ship captains.
Anybody got any sensible questions?"
"Just what kind of trouble are we looking for?" Cassirir
said.
"That's just it we don't know. This is closer to the