"Alan Dean Foster - Icerigger 1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

The fact that the outpost was Terranglo-named didn't nec-essarily mean the world had been
discovered by humans. It could have been a mixed crew or all thranx. The former seemed more
likely, though. No tidy-minded thranx would be likely to name a Commonwealth outpost "Brass
Monkey." Be-sides, the heat-loving insects would consider the globe beneath a choice slice of icy
hell.

What little of -the planet sat in sunlight formed a bright, almost painfully white crescent at its
edge. Mestaped infor-mation on the dark sphere floated to the: surface of his mind.

Tran-ky-ky lay on the fringes of humanx settlement and was a recently discovered world. Among
,other more signif-icant things, that made it fresh territory for eager types like himself.
However, it was not classified as a potential colony.

While humans could live on it, as they .did after a fashion in Brass Monkey, it was far from
hospitable. No New Riviera, this! Besides, it was classed 4-B. That. meant it was inhabited by a
native race of fair intellectual potential living at a pre-steam level of technology and probably
lower.

Topographically, the planet boasted a few small continents, large islands, really, and thousands
of small ones. Some were reasonably level, like Brass Monkey's Arsudun, others precipi-tous and
tectonic in origin. All lay scattered about the planet's shallow seas, which. were permanently
frozen to depths as great as three kilometers in some places and barely ten meters in others.

Gravity .92 T-standard, day about twenty is hours, distance from sun-too much. This charming
resort world, he thought sardonically, reached a positively balmy three degrees centi-grade at the
equator. A heat wave in Brass Monkey. Temp averaged around minus fifteen and dropped to an absurd
minus ninety some nights.

Moving away from the equator, things began to get chilly.

Oh yes, a charming stopover on our tour of the frayed, flayed edges of civilization, yes! Other
salesmen were assigned tours of territories like the twin pleasure worlds of Balthazzar and
Beersheba, or even Terra itself. Ethan Fortune? Always his back to the warn inner worlds of the
Commonwealth, always his profit margin poking hesitantly, narrowly, thinly, among empty places in
strange spaces. Nuts!

Oh, there were some minor compensations. For example, he made a very good living.

And he was still the insane side of thirty. Doubtless any day now someone in the home office would
take note of his incred-ible, astonishing record under impossible conditions. Then maybe he'd be
handed something better suited to his excep-tional talents. Like marketing jewelust lingerie to
the famed ecdysiasts of Loser's World, or to freshly-minted debutantes on New Paris.

Fee blinked, turned from the almost hypnotic white sickle, and tried to concentrate on more
prosaic considerations. Like how he was going to explain the workings of an Asandus portable
deluxe catalytic heater to the locals. Mestape gave him a working knowledge of the language-he
always pre-pared for each new world as thoroughly as possible-but offered. little in the way of
crucial tidbits like local customs and trading nuances. Tran-ky-ky was too new for tapes to be
available on anything but basic facts. Anthropological studies would have to come later. So his
range would be limited. .