"Cook, Glen - Heirs of Babylon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

Kurt knew Karen doubted the Political Office, and bore
a grudge against the destroyer. Already the two were
responsible for a dozen training separations. Her darkest
fear, and his, was that this one might be permanent.

Karen's fingers, teasing through his hair, quivered. He
tried to ignore it. He was going to the WarЧshe said to
no purpose. He repeated her questions in his mind. The
War had managed without him for centuries. Why must
he go? He had been assigned a good position, and the
same wanderlust which had led him to spend three years
with the Danish fishing fleets demanded he not refuse it.
More than once she had called him a willing victim of
man's oldest madness. If gods there were, Ares was the
most enduring.

A murmur of low voices came from the direction of the
canal. Kurt stopped thinking of Karen long enough to
glance at Chief Engineer Czyzewski and his group of
Polish volunteers. Then came the sound of small bells
ringing. lager's gunnery and fire control people were
making a last check of the gun mounts. The main battery
trained left and right. Flags rose to the starboard yard-
arm. "Half an hour," Kurt observed. Karen said nothing.

More clatter along the canal. They looked. The
officers: Captain von Lappus; Commander Haber; Kurt's
cousin. Lieutenant Lindemann; and Ensign Heiden, the
Supply Officer. Other officers were already aboardЧ
except one.

He walked alone, a hundred meters behind the others.
Tall, thin, pale, with cold eyes that seemed to stare out of
a private hell in a bony face with skin stretched taut,
skull-like, beneath sand-colored hair, he wore a uniform
unlike those of the others, neither naval, nor of the Baltic
Littoral. This was black, silver-trimmed, bore death's-head
insignia at the collars, grim imitations of an age long
unremembered. A Political Officer.

"Beck," Kurt sighed, shivering.

Karen stirred nervously, kicking a mound of rubble. It
collapsed with a tiny clatter.

Beck stopped, haunted eyes searching the steel bone-
yard. The strangeness of the man projected itself through

10