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

Diplomatic Service is inclined to be on your side! What do you think it's for?"


CHAPTER II

in something under two hours Hoddan was ushered into the ambassador's office. He'd been refreshed, his torn
clothing
replaced by more respectable garments, and the places where stun-pistols had stung him, soothed by ointments. But,
more important, he'd worked out and firmly adopted a new point of view.
He'd been a misfit at home on Zan. He was not contented with the humdrum and monotonous life as a member of a
space-pirate community. Piracy was a matter of dangerous take-offs in cranky rocket ships, to be followed by weeks or
months of tedious and uncomfortable boredom in highly unhealthy re-breathed air. No voyage ever contained more
than ten seconds of satisfactory action. All fighting took place just out of the atmosphere of the embattled planet.
Regard-less of the result of the fight, the pirates had to get away fast when it was over, lest overwhelming forces
swarm up from the nearby world. It was intolerably devoid of anything an ambitious young man would want,
Even when one had made a good prizeтАФwith the lifeboats of the foreign ship darting frantically for groundтАФand
even after one got back to Zan with the captured ship, even then there was little satisfaction to a pirate's career. Zan
had not a large population. Piracy couldn't support a large number of people. Zan couldn't attempt to defend itself
against even single, heavily armed ships that sometimes came in passionate resolve to avenge the disappearance of a
rich freighter or a fast, new liner. So the people of Zan, to avoid being hanged, had to play innocent. They had to be
convincingly simple, harmless folk who cultivated their fields and lived quiet, blameless lives. They might loot, but
they couldn't use their loot where investigators could find it. They had to build their own houses and make their own
furniture and grow their own food. So life on Zan was dull. Piracy was not profitable in the sense that one could live
well by it. It simply wasn't a trade for anybody like Hoddan.
So he'd abandoned all that. He'd studied electronics in books looted from passenger-ship libraries. Within months
after his arrival on a law-abiding planet, he was able to earn a living at electronics as an honest trade.
And that was unsatisfactory, too. Law-abiding communities were no more thrilling or rewarding than piratical ones.
A
payday now and then did not make up for the tedium of earning. Even when one had money there was not much to do
with it. On Walden, to be sure, the level of civilization was so high that most people took to psychiatric treatments so
they could stand it, and the neurotics vastly outnumbered the more normal folk. But on Walden, electronics was only
a way to make a living, like piracy, and there was no more fun to be had out of being civilized.
What Hoddan craved, of course, was a sense of achieve-ment. Technically, there were opportunities all about him.
He'd developed one, and it would save millions of credits a year if it were adopted. But it did not happen to be
anything that anybody wanted. He'd tried to force its use and he was in trouble. Now he saw clearly that a
law-abiding world was no more satisfactory than a piratical one.
The ambassador received him with a cordial wave of the hand.
"Things move fast,*" he said cheerfully. "You weren't here half an hour before there was a police captain at the
gate. He explained that an excessively dangerous criminal had escaped jail and been seen climbing the embassy wall.
He very generously offered to bring some men in and capture you and take you awayтАФwith my permission, of
course. He was shocked when I declined."
"I can understand that," said Hoddan.
"By the way," said the ambassador. "Young men like yourself . . . Ah . . . is there a girl involved in this?"
Hoddan considered.
"A girl's father," he acknowledged, "is the real complainant-against me."
"Does he complain," asked the ambassador, "because you want to marry her, or because you don't?"
"Neither," Hoddan told him. "She hasn't quite decided that I'm worth defying her rich father for."
"Good!" said the ambassador. "It can't be too bad a mess while a woman is being really practical. I've checked
your story. Allowing for differences of viewpoint, it agrees with the official version. I've ruled that you are a political
refugee, and so entitled to sanctuary in the embassy. And that's that."