"Edmond Hamilton - The Three Planeteers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

of your fellow Martians to win your independence from Earth. And the chances are that you'd win it.

And in the centuries that followed, your descendants would be more and more true Martians, wouldn't
they? They'd be modified by generations of life in a new environment. Free people of the different
worlds, all of the same Earth stock, would grow more and more unlike each other. If they couldn't settle
their differences they'd go to war. That's the speculative background of The Three Planeteers. But it
isn't any history of the future. It's a story. I hope it's a good story.

Edmond Hamilton
1940
 THE THREE PLANETEERS
From Earth, Venus and Mercury, three Musketeers of Space, accompanied by a female D'Artagnan,
rocket out in a grim battle against the League of the Cold Worlds!
 CHAPTER I
Comrades of Peril
THEY sauntered through the crowded, krypton lit street bordering the great New York spaceport,
casually, as though there was not a reward on their heads. An Earthman, a Venusian, and a huge
Mercurian, looking merely like three ordinary space-sailors in their soiled, drab jackets and trousers.

But inwardly John Thorn, the lean, dark-headed Earthman of the trio, was queerly tense. He felt the
warning of that sixth sense which tells of being watched. His brown, hard-chinned face showed nothing of
what he felt, and he was smiling as though telling some joke as he spoke to his two companions.

"We're being followed,тАЭ he said. тАЬI've felt it, since we left the spaceport. I don't know who it is."

Sual Av, the bald, bow-legged Venusian, laughed merrily as though at a jest. His bright green eyes
glistened, and there was a wide grin on his ugly, froglike face.

"The police?тАЭ he chuckled.

Gunner Welk, the huge Mercurian, growled in his throat. His shock of yellow hair seemed to bristle on
his head, his massive face and cold blue eyes hardening belligerently.

"How in hell's name would the Earth police spot us so quickly after our arrival?тАЭ he muttered.

"I don't think it's the police,тАЭ John Thorn said, his black eyes still smiling casually. тАЬStop at the next
corner, and we'll see who passes us."

At the corner gleamed a luminous red sign, тАЬTHE CLUB OF WEARY SPACEMEN.тАЭ In and out of the
vibration-joint, thus benevolently named, were streaming dozens of the motley throng that jammed the
blue-lit street. Reedy-looking red Martians, squat and surly Jovians, hard-bitten Earthmen-sailors from all
the eight inhabited worlds, spewed up by the great spaceport nearby. There were many naval officers
and men, tooтАФa few in the crimson of Mars, the green of Venus and blue of Mercury, but most of them
in the gray uniform of the Earth Navy.

John Thorn and his two comrades paused on the corner as though debating whether or not to enter the
vibration-joint. Inwardly, Thorn was tautly alert to everyone who passed in the shuffling throngs. Every
moment, his sense of peril grew greater. He was now certain that they were being watched from close at
hand.