"Kay Kenyon - Tropic of Creation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kenyon Kay)

Young Sascha Olander looked up at Captain Dammond for permission to run ahead and see Corporal
Willem's prize.

"It's no place for a youngster," Willem had groused on the hike out from camp, and he'd been right. But
Eli was not about to deny the general's granddaughter her small adventure. At fourteen, she was beyond
spoiling. The word had no meaning for a young woman who would have every privilege and never think
twice about it.

"Go ahead, then, Sascha," he said.

He caught a glimpse of her grin before she was sprint-ing down the lee side of the hard-packed dune and
up the next one.

Eli set out after her, his boots crunching over a litter of sticks protruding from the soil. He went heavily
armed, the range gun a comfortable bulk at his hip. Though the armistice had held for over a year now, if
the ahtra broke the peace, no one would be surprised. Some, like Corporal Willem, hoped for it. The
corporal had a regen arm and eye and looked forward to a little payback. As bad as re-gen limbs
looked, the-eyes were the worst, swollen trans-lucent fruits that nevertheless gathered light and saw the
world as well as the original, alpha eyesтАФbetter, the enlist-eds vowed.

Still, it was an uncharted world, and he had his people go armed.

Topping the rise, he saw the three of them waiting for him in the wadi, poking at the dusty hulk that
Corporal Willem had found earlier that morning. Next to Willem stood Luce Marzano, captain of the ship
and 112 crew marooned on the planet for the past three years. Like Willem, she wore the brown uniform
of infantry, patched in places, and faded by now to the color of sand. Alert but relaxed, she'd had plenty
of time to ferret out trouble if there was any. But she'd made her report: the locale was devoid of life,
inimical or otherwise. The enlisteds called the planet Null; in three years, they'd had no occasion to
change their minds.

The massive continent dominating this hemisphere was a quiet, scoured land, rumpled only by fingers of
wind through sand. The most action this place would see was the dwarf star, coming round for a visit
after a four-year absence, and bright enough now to cast a shadow at night.

Sascha was already climbing on the bank above the contraption, kicking sand from around its metallic
sides.

"Sascha," Eli called. He waved her away from the de-vice. The thing might be booby-trapped. But in
three years, Marzano's crew had found twenty-eight similar objectsтАФ now twenty-nineтАФand none of
them was wired to deto-nate.

Captain Marzano met Eli as he strode down the bank into the wadi. She cocked her head toward the
machineтАФ a craft, by all appearances, just like the others. "Looks like this one's newly minted," she said.
"Hell, it's in better shape than I am."

Eli smiled at that, then fell back to neutral. Best to remember he might soon be a witness in an inquiry into
her possible desertion from dutyтАж But he liked Luce Marzano. She was tough and confident, and at
forty-some, still handsome. And also gone missing the last two years of a war that had bled off the better
part of a genera-tion. Now, a year into the armistice, Eli's ship had found the marooned crew and the