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

of sailing his new ship.

Above him lay the writhing length of the Rainbow Serpent. By
conference with Nuru├╝dere and Uraroju over many days it had been
settled that Jiritzu would not return with Djanggawul to Yurakosi. His
act in killing Ham Tamdje was understood. There was no question of trial,
no accusation or even suggestion of crime.
 But the tradition of the sky-hero peoples held sacred any passenger on
the membrane ships.

Death of meat, membrane-ship passengers, ground squirmers traveling
between the stars in the tanks of sky-hero craft instead of sealed in the
bellies of massive conventional spacecraft, was almost unknown. There
was the half-legendary story of Elyun El-Kumarbis, traveler from the
pan-semite empire of O'Earth sailing aboard Makarata to Al-ghoul Phi,
who had passed as a sky hero and died of space radiation, his body later
launched into deep space at his dying request.

And there was the new tragedy of Ham Tamdje and his killer Jiritzu
who could never again be permitted to ride the membrane ships as a sky
hero.

Beneath Jiritzu and the lighter, Djanggawul dwindled, her great
membrane sails bellied out with starwinds, her golden skin reflecting the
multicolored lights of the Yirrkalla constellation.

And above Jiritzu, Yirrkalla itself, the serpent face, leering and glowing
its brightness.

He erected the masts of the lighter, fixed their bases on the three
equilaterally mounted decks of the lighter, climbed each mast in turn,
rotating gimbaled spars into position and locking them perpendicular to
the masts. The sails, the fine, almost monomolecular membranes that
would catch the starwinds and carry the lighter onward, he left furled for
the time being.

From the top of a mast he pushed himself gently, parallel with the deck
of the lighter. He floated softly to the deck, landing with bent knees to
absorb the light impact of his lean frame on the lighter's deck.

He opened the hatch and crawled into the cramped interior of the
lighter to check the instruments and supplies he knew were thereтАФthe
compact rations, the lighter's multiradiational telescope that he would
bring with him to the deck and mount for use, the lighter's miniature
guidance computer.

Instead, before even switching on the cabin light, he saw two brief
reflections of the colored illumination of YirrkallaтАФwhat he knew must be
two eyes.
 He flicked on his implanted radio and demanded to know the identity