"Andrew J. Offutt - Spaceways 08 - Under Twin Suns" - читать интересную книгу автора (Offutt Andrew J)

had happened and maybe Satana's crew could just ease quietly out of this. The two satchels clutched by the
Jarp-Cinnabar-contained enough ex-otic jewelry to make them all rich. At least so they assumed, and the problem was
that they certainly had no bill of sale for any of it!
Discussing all those Knorese gauds with security or any other kind of policers wouldn't be all that much fun.
Especially since proof of ownership was impossi-ble without opening a large and squirmy can of worms. Knor was an
unknown planet. Unknown, at least, to anyone save the five people of Satana, and Knor's own tiny population of
diminutive slavemasters.
Besides, onboard Satana. were two weird, non-sentient entities that were unknown, uncleared, and doubtless both
valuable and confiscable for "research and study." Finally there were the Knorese. Two extremely unusu-al,
presumably undisguisable and extremely non-Galactic aliens never before seen by anyone in the galaxy.
All in all, this was a profoundly rotten time to get involved with station security!
Yet Trafalgar had been right. They'd had to do some-thing. Otherwise they'd be worse than suspect for not having
helped out the law-and every one of them
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armed. Janja wondered idly: maybe if she tried faking a heart attack or going into labor or something they could all
hustle along to Medical and leave security to do its job here, without questions that might prove embarrassing!
Meanwhile Trafalgar stood tall, empty hands uplifted, flamboyantly full sleeves blousing downward. His large-eyed
gaze was directed at the security squad's leader. She was blinking, obviously unsteady. Getting herself together after
having been made to imitate Sainvytus, whoever that ancient dancer had been.
Trafalgar Cuw was a man who saw women as women, rather than as co-representatives of that demeaningly
desexing term, persons. This one looked pretty damned female, he thought, even in her emerald green uniform- with
lamentably baggy pants blousing over black boots- complete with black belt and shoulder-boards. And the black
beret perched not quite jauntily atop her glossy dark brown curls.
"Glad to be of service," he said, turning a sweet and ingenuous smile on her and her companions.
He was very good at that. Immediately the trio of emerald-and-blacks doubted their own comprehension, even
memory of what had just taken place. This boyish, theatrically gesturing fellow with the open, disarming smile-a hero?
No, no! He couldn't have accomplished what all three of them had botched. (Could he? No, no of course not!)
"What'd these dogs do?" he asked, in the same wide-open way. Still smiling, still wearing that wide-open face. No,
of course this fellow couldn't be compe-tent at instantaneous decisons, action, and violence.
"You don't need to know," one of the SolSeccers said.
"Don't be such a prick, Sarp," his superior told him, and Trafalgar blinked, then shot Sarp a swift odd look. Sarp
didn't look offended or resentful; he looked shamed and hang-doggy.
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Aha, Trafalgar Cuw thought, ole Sarp likes more than just the looks of his superior! Well nyah nyah to you . . .
prick.
"These are notorious smugglers," the squad's leader said to the man from Outreach. "And I think we owe yer some
thanks, spacefarer."
"Name's Trafalgar," he said, sweeping off his eleven-gallon hat and executing a bow, hat sweeping across before
him as if he had stepped out of the ranks of the King's Musketeers of a distant era on a distant planet. Or out of the
movie version of Dumas's version of those mousquetiers, anyhow. "And I hardly did any-thing-your man Sarp there
had one of 'em in a Freeze beam as fast as they put the Dancer on you and-him."
This tune Trafalgar's gesture was hardly so sweep-ing; that SolSeccer looked even hang-doggier than Sarp.
(Sarp was blinking, looking both surprised and pleased at this odd rainbow-clad man's nice words about him.)
"We just arrived. Just happened to be coming out of our ship, you see," Trafalgar said, gesturing back at the H-2
umbilical without looking at it. "Didn't know our lives were going to be endangered the instant we set foot on Soljer!"
A tiny bit of intimidation never hurts, he thought, continuing to look just oh-so pleasant.
"Our thanks anyway, sir. I'm Cosi, Sergeant: Station Soljer Security."
"My pleasure, Sergeant Cozy."
Wearing a quite pleasant face because it was hard not to, in the teeth of his nice-guy look, she glanced around.
Trafalgar didn't. He was afraid to look to see whether Hellfire had made herself scarce as he had urged.