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

electronic engineer, (b) to grow satisfyingly rich, (c) to marry a delightful girl, and (d) end his life with the reputa-tion
of being a great man.
He had spent his first two years on Walden trying to achieve the first of his objectives.
And it was only the night before the police broke into his room, that the accomplishment of his first objective
seemed imminent.
He had gone to bed and slept soundly. He was calmly sure that his ambitions were about to be realized. At
practically any instant his brilliance would be discovered and he'd be well-to-do; his friend Derec would admire him,
and even Nedda would probably decide to mar Mm right away.
Bron was happy to be on Walden, it was f iine world.
Outside the capital city was the spaceport that received ship-ments of luxuries and raw materials from halfway across
the galaxy. Its landing-grid reared skyward and tapped the planet's ionosphere for power with which to hoist ships to
clear-space and pluck down others from emptiness. There was commerce and manufacturing, wealth and culture, and
Walden modestly admitted that its standard of living was the highest in the Nurmi cluster. Its citizens had no reason
to worry about anything but a supply of tranquilizers to enable them to stand the boredom of their lives.
Even Hoddan was satisfied, as of the moment. On his native planet there wasn't even a landing-grid. The few
battered ships the inhabitants owned had to take off pre-cariously on rockets. They came back blackened and more
battered and sometimes they were accompanied by great hulls whose crews and passengers were mysteriously
missing. These extra ships had to be landed on their emergency rockets, and of course couldn't take off again, but
they always vanished quickly just the same. And the people of Zan, on which Hoddan had been born, always affected
in-nocent indignation when embattled spacecraft came and furiously demanded that they be produced.
There were some people who said that all the inhabitants of Zan were space-pirates and ought to be hanged;
compared with such a planet, Walden seemed a very fine place indeed. So on a certain night Bron Hoddan went
confidently to bed and slept soundly until three hours after sunrise. Then the police broke in his door.
They made a tremendous crash in doing it, but they were in great haste. The noise waked Hoddan, and he bunked
his eyes open. Before he could stir, four uniformed men grabbed him and dragged him out of bed. They searched him
fran-tically for anything like a weapon. Then they stood him against a wall with two stun-pistols on him, and the main
body of cops began to tear his room apart. He could not guess what they were looking for. Then his friend Derec
came hesitantly to the door and- looked at him remorse-fully. He wrung his hands.
"I had to do it, Bron," he said agitatedly. "I couldn't help
doing it!"
"What's happened?" asked Hoddan blankly. "What's this about?"
Derec said miserably:
"You killed someone, Bron. An innocent man! You didn't mean to, but you did . . . it's terrible!"
"Me, kill somebody! That's ridiculous!" protested Hoddan.
"They found him outside the power-house," said Derec bitterly. "Outside the Mid-Continent station that youтАФ"
"Mid-Continent? Oh!" Hoddan was relieved. It was amaz-ing how much he was relieved. He'd had a terrible fear for a
moment that somebody might have found out he'd been born and raised on Zan. This would have ruined everything. It
was almost impossible to imagine, but still it was a great relief to find out he was only suspected of a murder he hadn't
committed. And he was only suspected because his first great achievement as an electronic engineer had been
discovered. "They found the thing at Mid-Continent, eh? But I didn't kill anybody. And there's no harm done. The
thing's been running two weeks, now. I was going to the Power Board in a couple of days." He addressed the police. "I
know what's up, now," he said. "Give me some clothes and let's go get this straightened out."
A cop waved a stun-pistol at him.
"One word out of line, and it's pfft!"
"Don't talk, Bron!" said Derec in panic. "Just keep quiet! It's bad enough! Don't make it worse."
A cop handed Hoddan a garment. He put it on. He be-came aware that the cop was scared. So was Derec.
Every-body in the room was scared except himself. Hoddan found himself incredulous. People didn't act this way on
super-civilized, highest-peak-of-culture Walden.
"Who'd I kill?" he demanded. "And why?"
"You wouldn't know him, Bron," said Derec mournfully. "You didn't mean to do murder. But it's only luck that you