"Richard A. Lupoff - Sail the Tide of Mourning" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lupoff Richard A)

RICHARD LUPOFF'S "After the Dreamtime," in New Dimensions 4,
was a sensitive and moving account of life aboard the bizarre
sail-powered open-decked starships of the far future, crewed by the
descendants of Australian aborigines. That story ended in violence and
mutiny; now Lupoff carries his narrative onward, in a sequel that
stands up as an independent story for those who may not have read its
predecessor.



SAIL THE TIDE OF
MOURNING
Richard A. Lupoff


Nurundere, captain, ordered his lighter to be hauled from the storage
deck of Djanggawul and fitted for use of Jiritzu. Sky heroes bent their
efforts, sweat glistening on black skin, dirt of labor staining white duck
trousers and grip-soled shoes.

Much thought was given to their work and the reasons for it although
little was said of the matter. The people of Yurakosi were not given greatly
to speech: a taciturnity, self-containment was part of the heritage of their
race, from the days of their desert isolation in the heartland of Australia,
O'Earth.

They alone of the scattered children of Sol carried the gene that let
them sail the membrane ships. They alone carried in their skin the
pigment that filtered out the deadly radiation of the tracks between the
stars, that permitted them to clamber up masts and through rigging as
had their ancestors on the pacific waters of O'Earth centuries before,
while spacemen of other breeds clumbered and heaved about in their
massive vacuum armor.

The brilliant light of the multiple star Yirrkalla wheeled overhead;
Djanggawul had completed her great tack and pointed her figureheaded
prow toward home, toward Yurakosi, bearing the melancholy tale of her
voyage to N'Jaja and N'Ala and the death of a passenger, Ham Tamdje of
N'Jaja, at the hands of the sky hero Jiritzu.
 Djanggawul bore yet the scars of the attempt by surner meat to seize
control of the membrane ship and force from her crew the secret of their
ability to live unsuited in space. At N'Ala she had shuttled the surviving
surners to the orbiting Port Corley, along with the bodies of those killed in
the mutiny.

And now, passing the great tack at Yirrkalla, Djanggawul heeled
beneath the titanic solar wind that would fill all sails that bellied out from
the rows of masts on her three flat decks. With each moment the ship
gained momentum. Under the careful piloting of her first officer Uraroju
she would sail to Yurakosi on this momentum and on the force of the