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

of Sword-World life was sinking, like the east coastline of this continent, so
slowly as to be evident only from the records and monuments of the past. He
said as much, and added:


"And the genetic loss. The best Sword-World genes are literally escaping to
space, like the atmosphere of a low gravity planet, each generation begotten
by fathers slightly inferior to the last. It wasn't so bad when the Space
Vikings raided directly from the Sword-Worlds; they got home once in a while.
Now they're conquering planets in the Old Federation for bases, and staying
there."

Everybody had begun to relax; this wouldn't be a quar-

11

rel. Harkaman, who had shifted his drink back to his right hand chuckled.

"That's right. I've fathered a dozen
bastards in the Old Federation, and I know Space Vikings whose fathers were
born on Old Federation planets." He turned to Basil Gorrarn. "You see, the
gentleman isn't crazy, at all. That's what happened to the Terran Federation,
by the way. The good men all left to colonize, and the stuffed shirts and
yes-men and herd-followers and safety-firsters stayed on Terra and tried to
govern the Galaxy."

"Well, maybe this is all new to you, Captain," Rovard Grauffis said sourly,
"but Lucas Trask's dirge for the Decline and Fall of the Sword-Worlds is an
old song to the rest of us. I have too much to do to stay here and argue with
him."

Lothar Ffayle evidently did intend to stay and argue.

"All you're saying, Lucas, is that we're expanding. You want us to sit here
and build up population pressure like Terra in the First Century?"

"With three and a half billion people spread out on twelve planets? They had
that many on Terra alone. And it took us eight centuries to reach that."

That had been since the Ninth Century, Atomic Era, at the end of the Big War.
Ten thousand men and women on Abigor, refusing to surrender, had taken the
remnant of the System States Alliance navy to space, seeking a world the
Federation had never heard of and wouldn't find for a long time. That had been
the world they had called Excalibur. From it, their grandchildren had
colonized Joyeuse and Durendal and Flamberge; Haulteclere had been colonized
in the next generation from Joyeuse, and Gram from Haulteclere.

"We're not expanding, Lothar; we're contracting. We stopped expanding three
hundred and fifty years ago, when that ship came back to Morglay from the Old
Federation and reported what had been happening out there since the Big War.