"Laumer, Keith - Retief of the COTUC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

Relief to help me do the Consolidated Re-
port of Delinquent Reports ReportЧ"

"You'll have to manage alone, I fear, Mag-
nan. And now, back to the ramparts of de-
mocracy, gentlemen! As for you Retief ..."
The Ambassador fixed the latter with a poniard-
sharp eye: "I suggest you comport yourself
with a becoming modesty among the Tsuggs.
I should dislike to have a report of any unfor-
tunate incident."

"I'll do my best to see that no such report
reaches you, sir," Retief said cheerfully.

3

The green morning sun of Oberon shone
down warmly as Relief, mounted on a wiry
Struke, a slightly smaller and more docile
cousin of the fierce Vorch tamed by the Tsuggs,
rode forth from the city gates. Pink and yel-
low borms warbled in the treetops; the elu-
sive sprinch darted from grass tuft to grass
tuft. The rhythmic whistling of doody-bugs

RETIEF OF THE CDT 29

crying to their young supplied a somnolent
backdrop to the idyll.

Retief passed through a region of small, tidy
farms, where sturdy Doob peasants gaped from
the furrows. The forest closed in as the path
wound upward into the foothills. In midafter-
noon he tethered the Struke and lunched beside
a waterfall on pate sandwiches and sparkling
Bacchus Black from a cold-flask. He was just
finishing off his mousse eclair when a two-
foot-long steel arrow whistled past his ear to
bury itself six inches in the dense blue wood
of a nunu tree behind him.

Retief rose casually, yawned, stretched, took
out a vanilla dope stick and puffed it alight,
at the same time scanning the underbrush.
There was a quick movement behind a clump
of foon bushes; a second bolt leaped past him,
almost grazing his shoulder, to rattle away in
the brush. Appearing to notice nothing, Retief