"Andre Norton - Cat's eye" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

a strange bond of sympathy with any animalтАФhad
put on a trooper's tunic and vanished into the maw of
a transport. Lang Horan had not returned.

After that the Big Cough had hit the Dipple, leaving
only Troy Horan, a lanky adolescent who inherited
skills and desires for which there was no need on
Korwar. He also possessed a stubborn, almost fierce
independence, which had so far kept him either from
signing on as contract labor or from the temptation
offered by the Guild. Troy Horan was a loner; he did
not take orders well. And since his mother's death, he
had no close attachments in the Dipple. There were
few left there now who had come from Norden. The men
had volunteered as troopers, and, for some reason, their
families had been particularly susceptible to the Cough.

The door that was their gate to the day's future slid
7




back. Men stood away from the wall, got up. Mechani-
cally Troy made a brushing gesture down the length
of his thin torso, though nothing would restore a vestige

of trimness to his clothing.
Spacer's breeches, fifth-hand, clean enough but with

their sky blue now a neutral, dusty gray; spacer's
boots, a little wide for his narrow feet, the magnetic


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insets clicking as he walked; an upper tunic that was
hardly more than a sleeveless jerkin, all in contrast to
the single piece of his old life that he wore pulled
tight about his flat middle. That wide belt of a Norden
rider was well oiled, every one of its silver studs
polished and free of tarnish. Those studs formed a
design that was Troy's only heritage. If he ever rode
the grass plains again, with tupan galloping aheadтАФ
well, those tupan might bear that same pattern on their
cream-white hides. Lang Horan had been Range Master

and Brand Owner.
Because he was young, tough, and stubborn, Troy