"Andre Norton - Moon Singer 2 - Exiles of the Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

wearing because she had broken their laws.

Yiktor of the three-ringed moonтАФ What had happened there more than a planet-year ago was printed
on my mind so that no small detail could ever be forgotten. It was Maelen who had saved meтАФmy life if
not my body, or the body I had worn when I landed there. That body was long since "dead"тАФ spaced to
drift forever among the starsтАФunless it be drawn some day into the fiery embrace of a sun and
consumed.

I had had a second body, one which had run on four legs, hunted and killed, bayed at the moon
SotrathтАФwhich left in my mind strange dreams of a world which was all scent and sounds such as my
own species never knew. And now I wore a third covering, akin to the first and yet different, a body
which had another small residue of the alien to creep slowly into my consciousness, so that at times even
the world of the Lydis (which I had known from birth) seemed strange, a little distorted. Yet I was Krip
Vorlund in truth, no matter what outer covering I might wear (that now being the husk of Maquad of the
Thassa). Maelen had done thisтАФthe twice changingтАФand for that, despite her motives of good, not
illтАФshe went now four-footed, furred, in my company. Not that I regretted the last.

I had been first a man, then a barsk, and was now outwardly a Thassa; and parts of all mingled in me.
My fingers moved through Maelen's stiff crest as I listened, watched, sucked in air tainted not only with
queer odors peculiar to a house of Kartum but with the emotions of its inhabitants. I had always
possessed the talent of mind-seek. Many Traders developed that, so it was not uncommon. But I also
knew that in Maquad's body such a sense had been heightened, sharpened. That was why I was one of
this company at this hour, my superiors valuing my worth as an esper to judge those we must deal with.

And I knew that Maelen's even keener powers must also be at work, weighing, assaying. With our
combined report Foss would have much on which to base his decision. And that decision must come
very soon.

The Lydis had planeted four days ago with a routine cargo of pulmn, a powder made from the kelp beds
of Hawaika. In ordinary times that powder would have been sold to the temples to become fuel for their
ever-burning scented fires. The trade was not a fabulously handsome payload, but it made a reasonable
profit. And there was to be picked up in return (if one got on the good side of the priests) the treasures of
NodтАФor a trickle of them. Which in turn were worth very much indeed on any inner world.

Thoth, Ptah, Anubis, Sekhmet, Set; five planets with the sun Amen-Re to warm them. Of the five, Set
was too close to that sun to support life, Anubis a frozen waste without colonization. Which left Thoth,
Ptah, and Sekhmet. All those had been explored, two partly colonized, generations ago, by
Terran-descended settlers. Only those settlers had not been the first.

Our kind is late come to space; that we learned on our first galactic voyaging. There have been races,
empires, which rose, fell, and vanished long before our ancestors lifted their heads to wonder dimly at the
nature of the stars. Wherever we go we find traces of these other peoplesтАФthough there is much we do
not know, cannot learn. "Forerunners" we call them, lumping them all together. Though more and more
we are coming to understand that there were many more than just one such galaxy-wide empire, one
single race voyaging in the past. But we have learned so little.

The system of Amen-Re turned out to be particularly rich in ancient remains. But it was not known yet
whether the civilization which had flourished here had been only system-wide, or perhaps an outpost of a
yet-unclassified galactic one. Mainly because the priests had very early taken upon themselves the
guardianship of such "treasure."