"Andrew J. Offutt - Spaceways 19 - King of the Slavers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Offutt Andrew J)

Aglaya. Not with all the knowledge she had from Them. Native planetary
populations should be allowed to develop in their own way at their own pace,
the Galactic Accords said, and TGO enforced the Accords. She was Janja, and
she was gray, and she was a cop. With The Gray Organization. She was working.
Right now she was on a mission for TGO. White of hair and "white" of skin and
sheathed 4 in black, she functioned grayly for The Gray Organization. In the
dark, dark gray night. She was also being pursued. A slender belt angled
rakishly across her hip and almost nonexistent belly. Four slim strips of
leather-imitating black plastifabric called equhyde were braided together into
the slim belt buckled with shining mother-of-pearl. From the belt hung a
holster. Slim, straight, and narrow; a holster designed for a form of sidearm
called a stopper. Her holster was empty. She was working and her stopper was
in her black-gloved hand. Merely a squeeze-actuated black cylinder in a
slim-fingered fist that did not squeeze. She was also running as hard as she
could. That was hard indeed, propelled by those churning tensing muscular legs
developed on her high-G planet, and it was fast. City buildings fled past the
fleeing Janja, in the night. Aglaya's gravity was one-and-a-third-standard;
this world's was only three-quarters-standard. This planet was called
Franji., She ran fast and silently on Franji, on heels and soles of extruded
prostyrene that was like rubber crepe and, made to TGO specs, was a lot
better. She ran without looking back. That was part of her training. To look
back while fleeing accomplished nothing, she had been taught. It did tend to
slow one down and increase risks both known and unknown. Looking back to
assess danger while running was natural to the human species and to the
Aglayan species so much like it. A better model was the cat. Members of that
species did not trouble even to glance toward the sudden noise or menacing
smell that set their legs moving. They merely sprinted, at speed and without
looking back, until they 5 knew they had taken themselves well away from the
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source of the noise or the odor-the catalyst to their running. Then and only
then did a feline pause to look back-pause, while poised to fight or to sprint
on. Janja ran, stopper in hand, silently along a silent street. Since she made
no sound with her feet and only a little with her breathing, she heard clearly
the slapping feet behind her, the steps of her pursuer. She rounded the corner
of a building of the same material as the soles and heels of her boots, and
charged across a plaza and down thirty plascrete steps with a blurry churning
of her black-sheathed legs, and around a neon-lit fountain all beautiful in
six colors and eight hues, and past the menacing uniformed policer she knew
was only a holoprojection designed to frighten potential lawbreakers (who knew
of it and laughed and strove to perform obscene acts on the projection) and up
thirty broad imitation marble steps, and around a corner again- In near
darkness, she stopped almost as swiftly as if she had run into an invisible
wall. She hadn't. She was fast, and she could stop fast, too. Gray Janja of
far Aglaya. She waited, staring, holster empty and stopper in hand, up and
ready. Poised. Footsteps clomped unevenly down the last of the steps,
slap-slapped across Fountain Plaza, and came less rapidly up the steps she had
taken with such ease. She heard those feet reach the top. The man who had been