"Henry Kuttner - We Guard the Black Planet UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

Far beneath us surged the sea, moving with its sliding, resistless motion, spuming against the rocks. Above us, the stars shone brightly.

And on Nils' wrist, where it had returned, the gerfalcon Freya rested, drowsy, stirring a little from time to time, but content to remain there.

It had been thus forty years and more ago, Nils said, in his youth, when the hot blood went singing through his veins, and the Viking spirit flamed within him. The seas were tamed.

The way of his ancestors was no longer open to him. But there were new frontiers openЧ

The gulfs between the stars held mysteries, and Nils signed as A. B. on a spaceship, a cranky freighter, making the Great Circle of the trade routes. Earth to Venus, and swinging outward again to the major planets.

The life toughened him, after a few years.

And in Marspole North, in a satha-divs, he ran into Captain Morse Damon, veteran of the Asteroid War.

Damon told Nils about the ValkyriesЧthe guardians of the Black Planet.

He was harsh and lean and gray as weathered rock, and his black stare was without warmth. Sipping watered satha, he watched Nils Esterling, noting the leatheroid tunic worn at cuffs and elbows, the frayed straps of the elasto sandals.

"You know my name."

"Sure." Esterling said. "I see the newstapes. But you haven't been mentioned for a while."

"Not since the Asteroid War ended, no. The pact they made left me out in the cold. I had a guerilla force raiding through the Belt. In another year I could have turned the balance. But after the armisticeЧ"

Damon shrugged. "I'ttt no good for anything but fighting. I kept a ship; they owed* me that. The Vulcan. She's a sweet boat, well found and fast. But I can't use her unless I sign up with the big companies. Besides, I don't want to do freighting. The hell with that. I've been at loose ends, blasting around the System, looking forЧwell, I don't know what. Had a shot or two at prospecting. But it's dull, sinking assay shafts, sweating for a few tons of ore. Not my sort of life."

"There's a war on Venus."

"Penny-ante stuff. I'm on the trail of something big now. On the trail ofЧ" he smiled crookedlyЧ"ghosts. Valkyries."

"Mars isn't the place, then. Norway, on EarthЧ"

Damon's gaze sharpened. "Not Norway. Space. Valkyries, I saidЧwomen with wings."

Esterling drank satha, feeling the cold, numbing liquor slide down his throat. "A new race on some planet? I never heard of winged humans."

"You've heard of Glory Hole and Davy Jones* Locker. Mean to say you've been in space three years and never heard of the ValkyriesЧthe Black Planet?"

Esterling put down his glass gently. How did Damon know that he'd been a spaceman for three years? Till now he had thought this merely a casual acquaintance, two Earthmen drinking together on an alien world. NowЧ

"You mean the legend," he said. "Never paid much attention. When a ship cracks up in space, the crew go to the Black Planet after they die. Spaceman's heaven."

"Yeah. A legend, that's all. When wrecks are found, all the bodies are found in 'emЧnaturally! But the story is that there are winged womenЧcall them ValkyriesЧwho live in an invisible world somewhere in the System."

"You think they exist?"

"I think there's truth behind the legend. It isn't merely a terrestrial belief. Martians, Vesuvians, CallistansЧthey all have their yarns about winged space-women."

Esterling coughed hi the smoky atmosphere. "Well?"