"Murray Leinster - The Pirates of Zan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

Electricity
Supply. Staff cars of fire and police and sanitary services crowded each other and bumped fenders with tree-surgeon
trucks prepared. to move fallen trees, and with public-ad-dress trucks ready to lend stentorian tones to any voice of
authority.
But there was no situation except that there was no situa-tion. There was no fire. There was no riot. There was not
 even stray dogs for the pound-wagons to pursue, nor broken watermains for the water department technicians to shut
off and repair. There was nothing for anybody to do but ask everybody else what the hell they were doing there, and
presently to swear at each other for cluttering up the way.
The din of arriving horns and sirens had stopped, and a mutter of profanity was developing, when a last vehicle
arrived. It was an ambulance, an it came purposefully out of a side avenue and swung toward a particular place as if it
knew exactly what it was about. When its way was blocked, it hooted impatiently for passage. Its lights blinked
violently red, demanding clearance. A giant fire-fighting unit pulled aside. The ambulance ran past and hooted at a
cluster of police trucks. They made way for it. It blared at a gather-ing of dismounted, irritated truck personnel. It made
its way through them. It moved in a .straight line for the gate of the Interstellar Embassy.
A hundred yards from that gate, its horn blatted irritably at the car of the acting head of municipal police. That car
obediently made way for it.
The ambulance rolled briskly up to the very gate of the embassy. There it stopped. A figure got down from the
driver's seat and walked purposefully in the gate.
Thereafter nothing happened at all until a second figure rolled and toppled itself out on the ground from the seat
beside the ambulance driver's. That figure kicked and writhed on the ground. A policeman went to find out what was
the matter.
It was the ambulance driver. Not the one who'd driven the ambulance to the embassy gate, but the one who should
have. He was bound hand and foot and not too tightly gagged.
When released he swore vividly while panting that he had been captured and bound by somebody who said he was
Broh Hoddan and was in a hurry to get back to the Inter-stellar Embassy.
There was no uproar. Those to whom Hoddan's name had meaning were struck speechless with rage. The fury of
the police was even too deep for tears.
But Bron Hoddan, back in the quarters assigned him in the embassy, unloaded a dozen cooled-off stun-pistols from
his pockets and sent word to the Ambassador that he was back, and that the note ostensibly from Nedda had actually
been a police trap.
Getting ready to retire, he reviewed his situation. In some respects it was not too bad. All but Nedda's share in
trying to trap him, and having a party the same night. He stared morosely at the wall. Then he saw, very simply, that
she mightn't have known even of his arrest. She lived a highly sheltered life. Her father could have had her kept in
com-plete ignorance.
He cheered immediately. This would be his last night on Walden, if he were lucky. Already vague plans revolved in
his mind. Yes . . . he'd achieve splendid things; he'd grow rich; he'd come back and marry that delightful girl, Nedda;
and then end as a great ^man. Already, today, he'd done a number of things worth doing, and on the whole he'd done
them welL



CHAPTER III

when dawn broke over the capital city of Walden, the sight was appropriately glamorous. There were shining towers
and the curving tree-bordered ways, above which innumer-able small birds flew. The dawn, in fact, was heralded by
chirpings everywhere. During the darkness there had been a deep-toned humming sound, audible all over the city.
That was the landing-grid in operation out at the spaceport, letting
down a huge liner from Rigel, Cetis, and the Nearer Rim. Presently it would take off for Krim, Darth, and the Coal-sack
Stars, and if Hoddan were lucky he would be on it. At the earliest part of the day there was only tranquility over the
city and the square and the Interstellar Embassy.