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

Before that, we were discovering new planets and colonizing them. Since them,
we've been picking the bones of the dead Terran Federation."

Something was going on by the escalators to the landingstage. People were
moving excitedly in that direction, and

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the news-cars were circling like vultures over a sick cow. Harkaman wondered,
hopefully, if it mightn't be a fight.

"Some drunk being bounced," Nikkolay Trask dismissed it. "Sesar's let all
Wardshaven in here, today. But, Lucas, this Tanith Adventure; we're not making
any hit-and-run raid. We're taking over a whole planet; it'll be another
SwordWorld in forty or fifty years. A little farther away, of course, but-"


"Inside another century, we'll conquer the whole Federation," Baron Rathmore
declared. He was a politician and never let exaggeration worry him. a.

"What I don't understand," Harkaman said, "is why you support Duke Angus, Lord
Trask, if you think the Tanith adventure is doing Gram so much harm."

"If Angus didn't do it, somebody else would. But Angus is going to make
himself King of Gram, and I don't think anybody else could do that. This
planet needs a single sovereignty. I don't know how much you've seen of it
outside this duchy, but don't take Wardshaven as typical. Some of these
duchies, like Glaspyth or Didreksburg, are literal snake-pits. All the major
barons are at each other's throats, and they can't even keep their own knights
and petty-barons in order. Why, there's a miserable little war down in 1
Southmain Continent that's been going on for over two centuries."

"That's probably where Dunnan's going to take that army of his," a
robot-manufacturing baron said. "I hope it gets 1 wiped out, and Dunnan with
it."

"You don't have to go to Southmain; just go to Glaspyth," someone else said.


"Well, if we don't get a planetary monarchy to keep order, this planet will
decivilize like anything in the Old Federation."

"Oh, come, Lucas!" Alex Gorram protested. "That's pulling it out too far."