"H. Beam Piper - The Space Viking" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

"Nothing to take notice of. He was here, yesterday, demanding
to speak with her. We got him to leave without too much unpleasantness."


"It'll be something for me to take notice of, if he keeps it up after
tomorrow."

For his seconds and Andray Dunnan's, that was; he hoped it wouldn't
come to that. He didn't want to have to shoot a kinsman to the house of Ward,
and a crazy man to boot.

"I'm terribly sorry for him," Elaine was saying. "Father, you should have let
me talk to him. I might have made him understand."

Sesar Karvall was shocked. "Child, you couldn't have subjected yourself to
that! The man is insane!" Then he saw her bare shoulders, and was even more
shocked. "Elaine, your shawl!"

Her hands went up and couldn't find it; she
looked about in confused embarrassment. Amused, Lucas picked it from the shrub
onto which she had tossed it and draped it over her shoulders, his hands
lingering briefly. Then he gestured to the older man to precede them, and they
entered the arbored walk. At the other end, in an open circle, a fountain
played, white marble girls and boys bathing in the jade green basin. Another
piece of loot from one of the Old Federation planets; that was something he'd
tried to avoid in furnishing Traskon New House. There'd be a lot of that

7

coming to Gram after Otto Harkaman took the Enterprise to space.

"I'll have to come back, some time, and visit them," Elaine whispered to him.
"They'll miss me."

"You'll find a lot of new friends at your new home," he whispered back.
"You wait till tomorrow."

"I'm going to put- a word in the Duke's ear about that fellow," Sesar Karvall,
still thinking of Dunnan, was saying. "If he speaks to him, maybe it'll do
some good."

"I doubt it. I don't think Duke Angus has any influence over him at all."

Dunnan's mother had been the Duke's younger sister; from his father he had
inherited what had originally been a prosperous barony. Now it was mortgaged
to the top of the manor house aerial-mast. The Duke had once assumed Dunnan's
debts, and refused to do so a second time. Dunnan had gone to space a few
times, as a junior officer on trade and-raid voyages into the Old Federation.
He was supposed to be a fair astrogator. He had expected his uncle to give him
command of the Enterprise, which had been ridiculous. Disappointed in that, he