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

He said he wasn't, and would have let it go at that. Young Basil Gorram had to
get his foot in, too.

"Lord Trask does not approve of the Tanith Adventure," he said scornfully. "He
thinks we should stay home and produce wealth, instead of exporting robbery
and murder to the Old Federation for it."

The smile remained on Otto Harkaman's face; only the friendliness was gone. He
unobtrusively shifted his drink to his left hand.

"Well, our operations are definable as robbery and murder," he agreed. "Space
Vikings are professional robbers and murderers. And you object? Perhaps you
find me personally objectionable?"

10

"I wouldn't have shaken your hand or had a drink with you if I did. I don't
care how many planets you raid or cities you sack, or how many innocents, if
that's what they are, you massacre in the Old Federation. You couldn't
possibly do anything worse than those people have been doing to one another
for the past ten centuries. What I object to is the way you're raiding the
Sword-Worlds."

"You're crazy!" Basil Gorram exploded.

"Young man," Harkaman reproved, "the conversation was between Lord Trask and
myself. And when somebody makes a statement you don't understand, don't tell
him he's crazy. Ask him what he means. What do you mean, Lord Trask?"

"You should know; you've just raided Gram for eight hundred of our best men.
You raided me for close to forty vaqueros, farm workers, lumbermen, machine
operators, and I doubt I'll be able to replace them with as good." He turned
to the elder Gorram. "Alex, how many have you lost to Captain Harkaman?"


Gorram tried to make it a dozen; pressed, he admitted to a score and a half.
Roboticians, machine supervisors, programmers, a couple of engineers, a
foreman. There was grudging agreement from the others. Burt Sandrasan's engine
works had lost almost as many, of the same kind. Even Lothar Ffayle admitted


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to losing a computerman and a guard-sergeant.

And after they were gone, the farms and ranches and factories would go on,
almost but not quite as before. Nothing on Gram, nothing on any of the
Sword-Worlds, was done as efficiently as three centuries ago. The whole level