"Lee Killough - Deadly Silents" - читать интересную книгу автора (Killough Lee)

Chapter One

STEVEM KAMPACALAS felt as he had at the age of eight
seeing the St. Louis earthquake ruins . . . breathless, all
eyes and ears, trying to look everywhere at once. For the
moment. Ten forgot all about the crisis that had brought
him here. Every sense told him he stood on an alien world.
The 1.2 gravity dragged noticeably harder on him, and the
air, smelling of a faint, pleasant muskiness, touched his
skin with such a dry chill that he instantly visualized the
vast arid plains that dominated Egar's surface, landlocking
the scattered seas. D'shenegar's travelport terminal lay low
and broad around T┬╗"^ its lines and angles subtly different
from Terran architecture, lighted through numerous sky-
lights by the large bronze sun and marked with signs bear-
ing Chinese-like characters.

And of course he saw aliens, Iregara, although fewer
than Ten bad expected to see in a facility serving the
world's third largest city. As holos of them, showed, and
like one Ten had seen in Kansas City, they stood in about
the same range of height as Terrans, but uniformly stockier
and more muscular, with four-fingered hands, short torsos,
and heads large in proportion to their height Wide violet
eyes dominated their flat faces, and intricate designs pat-
terned their velvet-textured fur. Ten saw the designs easily
because except for a few individuals in overalls, most, de-
spite a temperature that raised goosebumps on Ten, wore
only calf or thigh-high boots and multi-pocketed tabards or
pouched belts.

Behind him, a flat Terran voice said, "This is sure
mighty different from Dallas."

Another voice replied, "I'd be disappointed if it looked
anything like Earth."

Ten turned to grin at the speakers, a muscular, sandy-

2 DEADLY SH.ENTS

haired young man near his own age and a taller, older one
with the dusky skin and wiry black hair of Afro ancestry.
He had met Pol Wassom and Roban Adeyanpi in Switch'
point, where they came through sbutdeboxes from their re-
spective cities to connect with the D'shenegar shuttlebox.
Recognizing the undeunable but unmistakable stamp of
leoтАФlaw enforcement officerтАФon each other, the three
had drifted together and, after discovering they were all
headed for the same job at the same destination, joined