"Andre Norton - Ross Murdock 04 - Key Out Of Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

been difficult for man to accept. Ross's irritation, unjustified as he knew
it to be, did not rest on Tino-rau or Taua. He enjoyed the hours when he
buckled on gill-pack and took to the sea with those two ten-foot,
black-and-silver escorts sharing the action. But Karara . . . Karara's
presence was a different matter altogether. The Agents' teams had always
been strictly masculine. Two men partnered for an interlocking of abilities
and temperaments, going through training together, becoming two halves of a
strong and efficient whole. Before -being summarily recruited into the
Project, Ross had been a loner--living on the ragged edges of the law, an
indigestible bit for the civilization which had become too ordered and
"adjusted" to absorb his kind. But in the Project he had discovered others
like himself--men born out of time, too ruthless, too individualistic for
their own age, but able to operate with ease in the dangerous paths of the
Time Agents. And when the time search for the wrecked alien ships had
succeeded and the first intact ship found, used, duplicated, the Agents had
come from forays into the past to be trained anew for travel to the stars.
First there had been Ross Murdock, criminal. Then there had been Ross
Murdock and Gordon Ashe, Time Agents. Now there was still Ross and Gordon
and a quest as perilous as any they had known. Yet this time they had to
depend upon Karara and the dolphins.
"Tomorrow"--Ross was still not sorting out his thoughts, though aware of
prickly feelings sharp as embedded thorns--"I will come."
"Good!" If she recognized his hostility for what it was, that did not bother
her. Once more she whistled to the dolphins, waved a casual farewell with
one hand, and headed up the beach toward the base camp. Ross chose a more
rugged path over the cliff. Suppose they did not find what they sought near
here? Yet the old taped map suggested that this was approximately the site
starred upon it. Marking a city? A star port? Ashe had volunteered for
Hawaika, demanded this job after the disastrous Topaz affair when the team
of Apache volunteers had been sent out too soon to counter what might have
been a sneak settlement planted by Greater Russia. Ross was still unhappy
over the ensuing months when only Major Kelgarries and maybe, in a lesser
part, Ross had kept Gordon Ashe in the Project at all. That Topaz had been a
failure was accepted when the settlement ship did not return. And that had
added to Ashe's sense of guilt for having recruited and partially trained
the lost team. Among those dispatched over Ashe's vehement protests had been
Travis Fox who had shared with Ashe and Ross the first galactic flight in an
age-old derelict spaceship. Travis Fox--the Apache archaeologist--had he
ever reached Topaz? Or would he and his team wander forever between worlds?
Did they set down on a planet where some -inimical form of native life or a
Russian settlement had awaited them? The very uncertainty of their fate
continued to ride Ashe. So he insisted on coming out with the second
settlement team, the volunteers of Samoan and Hawaiian -descent, to carry on
an even more exciting and hazardous exploration. Just as the Project had
probed into the past of Earth, so would Ashe and Ross now attempt to
discover what lay in the past of Hawaika, to see this world as it had been
at the height of the galactic civilization, and so to learn what they could
about their fore-runners into space. And the mystery they had dropped into
upon landing added to the necessity for those discoveries. Their probe, if
fortune favored them, might become a gate through time. The installation was