"Edmond Hamilton - Doomstar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

aware, in a vague fashion, of the warm tones of book bindings and polished wood and leather, and the
subdued glow of a magnificent carpet. But only vaguely. It was the faces of the men who sat looking at
him that held all his attention.
There was Fersen, Under-Secretary for Interstellar Trade representing Earth in that sector of space
that contained the Hyades. Him Kettrick knew, personally and too well. The others, except one, he
knew only by reputation, but he knew them. And a small pulse of alarm began to beat deep inside him,
because it was unnatural that these men should have sat in this room waiting for one Johnny Kettrick.
They studied him, these men, for a long quiet moment. Howard Vickers, thin and stooped and
schoolmasterish, re-sponsible for the safety of nine planets and a sun. His aide, a deceptively willowy
chap with the most perfectly trimmed mustache Kettrick had ever seen, Marshall Wade. Fersen,
sour-faced and frowning. The bull-shouldered, big-jawed man from the Department of Prosecutions,
Arthur Raymond, otherwise known as The Minotaur. Dr. Hayton Smith, the astrophysicist. And two tall
slender dusky-gold men who sat close to the fire and watched him with eyes of a bright and startling blue.
Howard Vickers, Chief of Solar System Security, broke the silence.
"Please sit down, Mr. Kettrick."
Kettrick hesitated, and the younger and shorter of the two dusky-gold men said, in the sweet slurred
cadence of his native speech, "Better do it, Johnny. It may be a very long night."


2

Kettrick answered, in the same slurred speech, "Your ad-vice was always good, Sekma, even if I didn't
take it. So I'll take it now."
He sat down in the one empty chair, which had heen placed as though by accident in such a position
that all of the men could watch his every gesture and change of ex-pression. Kettrick had a strange
feeling that he was doing all this in a dream, a rather unpleasant dream, one of those things that seems
quite normal on the surface but which the sleeper knows is a developing nightmare from which he will
presently wake up screaming. But perversely, now that he was well into it, he did not want to wake up.
He was con-sumed with curiosity.
 "Would you like a drink?" asked Vickers.
"No, thank you," said Kettrick. There were times when the instinct of self-preservation was stimulant
enough, and better left to itself.
"Very well. Then first of all, Mr. Kettrick, I will ask you to listen without interrupting. You know Mr.
Sekma. I believe you do not know Dr. Takinu. He is chief of astro-physical research for the Bureau of
Astronomy at Tananaru."
Kettrick bowed slightly to Takinu, who returned the ac-knowledgment. He was older than Sekma,
beginning to show white circles in the tight copper-wire curls that covered his narrow head, and his face
bore lines of strain, great and immediate, that one might look for in the face of a states-man but hardly in
that of an astrophysicist concerned only with the remote crises of stars. Kettrick shot a quick glance at
Smith and saw the shadow of the same thing in the Earthman's eyes.
Fear?
"Dr. Takinu will tell you himself what he has already told us."
Vickers leaned back, and Takinu looked at Kettrick. "It is convenient for you that I speak my own
tongue?"
"It is convenient," Kettrick said.
Fear?
"Good," said Takinu. "That way is quicker." Wearily, as though he had repeated these same words
until he hated them, he went on, "Our instruments picked up and recorded a change in one of the outlying
stars of the HyadesтАФa small fringe sun with no habitable planets. It was a routine sweep of the sky and
the new data was only noticed when the computers found the discrepancy in the gamma radiation level