"Gordon R. Dickson - The Outposter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

Earth-City and the Colonies that the aris-tocrats even effected a private slang of their own, with
fashionable pet names for one another which changed with every season.

Mark stared at this girl now. In spite of him-self, she attracted him, like some pure jewel in an
ostentatious setting of great richness and craft. Everything about her was the symbol of all he had spent
his knowledgeable years in detestingтАФbut, she herself was beau-tiful. Beautiful and young, and so
wrapped in luxury that she could not conceive of its lack. To her, a jaunt to the Colonies would be a
play-trip, anadventure ...

He put her coldly from his mind and turned back to his examination of the colonists and the spaceship.

She was a one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-ton vessel, theWombat, ready for takeoff to the Abruzzi
Sector of colonized spaceтАФthat sector protected by Outer Space Navy Base One, where nine-tenths of
the colonized worlds were to be found, circling half a dozen closely related stars. Takeoff was scheduled
for two hours from now. Right at the moment, theWombat lay on her belly in her berth on Spaceport,
South Pacific,a great floating pad of concrete five hundred miles due north from the Marquesas.

Her cargo, according to the transport schedule, was machine tools, instruments, weapons, and some
twelve hundred colonists destined for assignment to colonies on the four colonized worlds under the sun
of Garnera, a GO-type star with a family of eighteen planets. Her passengers included the
admiral-general of Space Navy Force Blue One at the Outer Navy Base, with his personal party of six,
and twenty-three manufacturers' repre-sentatives or salesmen, four with wives. Also, three outposters
including Markhimself .

Mark caught sight of his reflection in the tall silver case of a plasma power generator awaiting loading.
The figure that looked back at him was that of a tall, lean, rather long-faced youth, with dark and
penetrating eyes, in the utilitarian boots, jump suit, and short jacket of an experienced outposter. A side
arm rested openly in a topless grey holster fitted flat to the belt around his narrow waist and clamped to
the grey cloth of the pants' leg over the outside of his right thigh. Clamped likewise around the
grey-sleeved biceps of his left arm was the black metal band and seal that proclaimed his outposter rank.
If it had not been for the youthfulness of his features, there would have been no reason for the slightly
startled look on the face of the guard at the outer gate of the spaceport's closed field area, several
minutes ago.

At the memory of that look, a cool breath of humour blew for a second across Mark's mind. It would
not be a usual sight for the guardтАФthe face of someone as young as Mark and wearing gun and grey, like
a veteran of the Outpost Stations. Even newly graduated outposters likehimself , Mark knew, were
nor-mally three to five years older than he was.

His attention was drawn back to the long line of figures some twenty yards away, beyond the wire fence,
streaming slowly aboard the ship through a cargo hatch. Men and women alike, they moved without
protest. But their faces were sombre, and not a few of them were pale with inner fear or a hangover.
Only here and there was a zombie-like figure helped along by a friend or a wife, having been put under
heavy tranquillization for his own emotional relief, or because he had caused trouble in the staging area.

At this moment they looked like an ordinary batchтАФa simple cross section of humanity from the
Earth-City. But in their present stage of shock it was impossible to tell. Right now their minds were full
only of the fact that they were being sent out. Later, when the shock wore off, it would be possible for
the out-posters aboard to weigh and judge them, to read their characters and take advantage of being on
shipboard with them to put in priority claims for the more likely ones.