"Keith Laumer - Galactic Odyssey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

For the next five hours I perched on my seat with my mouth open, taking in the sights: the
high, blue -black sky, strange trees like overgrown parsley sprigs, the leathery grass that stretched
to a horizon that was too far awayтАФand the animals. The things we were after were big crab -
armored monstrosities, pale purple and white, with mouths full of needle-pointed teeth and horns
all over their faces. Lord Desroy shot two of them, stopping the car and going forward on foot. I
guess it took courage, but I didnтАЩt see the point in it. Each time, he and Sir Orfeo made a big thing
of hacking off one of the horns and taking a lot of pictures and congratulating each other. The
Lady Raire just watched from the car. She didnтАЩt seem to smile much.
We loaded up and went on to another world then, and Milord shot a thing as big as a diesel
locomotive. Sir Orfeo never talked about himself or the other members of the party, or the world
they came from, but he explained the details of the hunt to me, gave me pointers on tracking and
approaching, told me which gun to use for different kinds of quarry. Not much of it stuck. After
the fourth or fifth hunt, it all got a little stale.
тАЬThis next world is called Gar 28,тАЭ Sir Orfeo woke me up to tell me after a long stretch in space.
тАЬDoesnтАЩt look like much; dry, you know; but thereтАЩll be keen hunting. I found this one myself,
running through tapes made by a survey team a few hundred years ago. The fellows weтАЩll be going
after they called dire-beast. YouтАЩll understand why when you see the beggars.тАЭ
He was right about Gar 28. We started out across a rugged desert of dry -baked pink and tan
and yellow clay, fissured and cracked by the sun, with points of purplish rock pushing up here and
there, a line of jagged peaks for a horizon. It didnтАЩt look like game country to me, but then I wasnтАЩt
the hunter.
The sun was high in the sky, too bright to look at, a little smaller than the one I was used to. It
was cool and comfortable inside the car; it hummed along a couple of feet above the ground,
laying a dust trail behind it from the air blast it was riding on. The tracks were for hills that were
too steep for the air cushion to climb.
About a mile from the yacht, I looked back; it was just a tiny glint, like a lost needle, among all
that desolation.
Up front, on the other side of the glass panel, Lord Desroy and Sir Orfeo and the Lady Raire
chatted away in their odd language, and every now and then said something in that strange brand
of English they spoke. I could hear them through a speaker hookup in the back of the car. If IтАЩd
had something to say, I donтАЩt know whether they could have heard it or not.
After two hoursтАЩ run, we pulled up at the top of a high escarpment. Sir Orfeo opened the hatch,
and we all got out. I remembered Sir Orfeo had told me always to stay close with his gun when we
were out of the car so I got out one of the crater-rifles and came up behind them in time to see Sir
Orfeo point.
тАЬThereтАФby the double peak at the far end of the fault-line!тАЭ He snapped his goggles up and
whirled to start back and almost slammed into me. A very thin slice of an instant later I was lying
on my back with my head swimming, looking into the operating end of his filament pistol.
тАЬNever come up behind me with a weapon in your hand!тАЭ
I got up, with my head still whanging from t he blow heтАЩd hit me, and followed them to the car,
and we went tearing back down the slope the way weтАЩd come.
It was a fast fifteen-minute run out across the flats toward where Sir Orfeo had seen whatever
it was he saw. I had my binocular goggles on and was looking hard, but all I saw was the dusty
plain and the sharp rock spires, growing taller as we rushed toward them. Then Sir Orfeo swung
the car to the left in a wide curve and pulled to a stop behind a low ridge.
тАЬEverybody out!тАЭ he snapped, and popped the hatch up and was over the side.
тАЬDonтАЩt sit there and brood, Jongo!тАЭ He was grinning, excited and happy now. тАЬMy crater-rifle;
Z-guns for his lordship and Lady Raire!тАЭ
I handed the weapons down to him , stock-first, the way heтАЩd told me.
тАЬYouтАЩll carry the extra crater and a filament pistol,тАЭ he said, and moved back up front to go into