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

The spaceliner increased in size, descending toward the landing-grid. The grid itself was a monstrous lattice of
steel, a half-mile high and enclosing a circle not less in diameter. It filled the larger part of the level valley floor, and
horned duryas and what Hoddan later learned were horses grazed in it. The animals paid no attention to the deep
humming noise the grid made in its operation.
The ship seemed the size of a pea. Presently it was the size of an apple. Then it was the size of a basketball, and
then it swelled enormously and put out spidery metal legs with large splay metal feet on which it alighted and settled
gently to the^ground. The humming stopped.
There were shoutings. Whips cracked. Straining, horn-tossing duryas heaved and dragged something, very
delib-erately, out from between warehouses and under the arches of the grid. There were two dozen of the duryas,
and despite
the shouts and whip cracking they moved with a stubborn slowness. It took a long time for the object with the big
clumsy wheels to reach a spot below the spacecraft. Then it took longer, seemingly, for brakes to be set on each
wheel, and then for the draft animals to be arranged to pull as two teams against each other.
More shoutings and whip-crackings. A long, slanting, lad-der-like arm rose. It teetered, and a man with a vivid
purple cloak rose with it at its very end. The ship's airlock opened and a crewman threw a rope. The purple-cloaked
man caught it and made it fast. From somewhere inside the ship, the line was hauled in. The end of the landing ramp
touched the sill of the airlock. Somebody made these fast and the purple-cloaked man triumphantly entered the ship.
There was a pause. Men loaded carts with cargo to be sent to other remote planets. In the airlock, Bron Hoddan
stepped to the unloading-ramp and descended to the ground. He was the only passenger. He had barely reached a
firm footing when objects followed him. His own shipbag and then parcels, bales, boxes, and other such nondescript
items of freight. For a mere five minutes the flow of freight con-tinued. Darth was not an important center of trade.
Hoddan stared incredulously at the town outside one side of the grid. It was only a town, and was almost a village.
Its houses had steep, gabled roofs, of which some seemed to be tile and others thatch. Its buildings leaned over the
narrow streets, which were unpaved. They looked like mud. And there was not a power-driven ground-vehicle
anywhere in sight, nor anything man-made in the air.
Great carts trailed out to the unloading-belt. They dumped bales of skins and ingots of metal, and more bales and
more ingots. Those objects rode up to the airlock and vanished. Hoddan was ignored. He felt that without great qare
he might be crowded back into the reversed loading-belt and be carried back into the ship.
The loading process ended. The man with the purple cloak, who'd ridden the teetering ladder up, reappeared and
came striding grandly down to ground. Somebody cast off, above. Ropes writhed, fell and dangled. The ship's air-
lock door closed.
There was a vast humming sound. The ship lifted sedately. It seemed to hover momentarily over the group of
duryas and humans in the center of the grid's enclosure. But it was hovering. It shrank. It was rising in an absolutely
vertical line. It dwindled to the size of a basketball and then an apple. Then to the size of a pea. And then that pea
diminished until the spaceship from Krim, Walden, Cetis, Rigel and the Nearer Rim had become the size of a dust mote
and then could not be seen at all. But one knew that it was going on to Lohala and Tralee and Famagusta and the
Coalsack Stars.
Hoddan shrugged and began to trudge toward the ware-houses. The dttrz/a-drawn landing-ramp began to roll
slowly in the same direction. Carts and wagons loaded the stuff discharged from the ship. Creaking, plodding, with
the curved horns of the duryas rising and falling, the wagons overtook Hoddan and passed him. He saw his shipbag
on one of the carts. It was a gift from the Interstellar Ambassador on Walden. He'd assured Hoddan that there was a
fund for the assistance of political refugees, and that the bag and its contents was normal. But in addition to this,
Hoddan had a number of stun-pistols, formerly equipment of the police department of Walden's capital city.
He followed his bag to a warehouse. Arrived there, he found the bag surrounded by a group of whiskered Darthian
characters wearing felt pants .and large sheath knives. They had opened the bag and were in the act of ferocious
dispute about who should get what of its contents. Incidentally they argued over the stun-pistols, which looked like
weapons but weren't because nothing happened when one pulled the trigger. Hoddan grimaced. They'd been in store
on the liner during the voyage. Normally they picked up a trickle charge from broadcast power, on Walden, but there
was no broadcast power on the liner, nor on Darth. They'd leaked their charges and were quite useless. The one in his
pocket would be useless, too.