"E. E. Doc Smith - Subspace 2 - Subspace Encounter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

the mayhem, carnage, and sheer slaughter of the Games.

The eagles had been fed. That is, brutish executioners, after breaking convicts' arms and
legs with their mauls, had thrown their helpless but still living bodies into great cages of
steel bars; there they had been torn to grisly bits and devoured by deliberately-starved,
forty-pound Mountain King eagles.

The five preliminary bouts, in ascending order of skill and of savagery, were over; two
women and three men had died. Bloodily. Now Games-master Sonfayand Baylor
stepped up onto the "table"-the circular platform twenty-five feet in diameter and twelve
inches above the arena's floor-that was the site of action. Unlike the squared rings of
Tellus, this site had no ropes or guards, any games man leaving the table during combat,
for any reason whatever; became eaglemeat then and there.

-10-
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" Baylor bellowed happily. Like so many sports announcers,
he liked to bellow and always stood ten feet away from the nearest microphone so that
he could bellow. "On my right, the champion professional bladesman of Meetyl! The one
and only-the world-renowned Masked Marvel . . . .тАЭ

Amidst a tremendous roar of applause a tall, trim, splendidly-muscled man leaped in one
bound to the center of the table and bowed four ways, saluting the crowd gracefully with
his knife at each bow. He wore fighting shoes, a tight breech-clout, and a light mask of
yellow gold-a mask that did not conceal his Garshan beak of a nose, to say nothing of
interfering with even his widest peripheral vision. The games-master finally broke into the
applause, still bellowing and still loving the sound of his own voice.

"All I'm allowed to tell you about the champ is that he's a Garshan, and . . .тАЭ

"You're telling us?" a stentorian voice came raucously from ringside-and that statement
had been entirely unnecessary. The Masked Marvel's reddish-brown skin and his
veritable beak of a nose could not possibly have belonged to anyone except a native of
Garsh-the home of the proudest, the haughtiest, the purest of blood and the most
intransigently warlike of all the Justiciate's races of men. "Chop it off get on with the
fight!" the heckler howled, and the crowd went wild-clapping, stamping, whistling,
shrieking, cat-calling, booing.

"QUIET! SILENCE! SHUT UP!!!" the games-master yelled; so loud now and so close to
a microphone that even Hall One's super-powered public-address system squawked
under the overload . . . and the crowd did quiet down enough so that his voice could
again be heard. "He's a Garshan, and he's always had high status and a number, and
he's got an awful lot of kills on his belt. Forty-six. Enough so he's now Status Ten point
Nine Nine Four.

"And on my left the challenger-Sonrodnar Rodnar of Slaar-Status Thirty-Eight-an
amma-CHOOR. . . . There was some applause-not very much-as Rodnar leaped lightly
to the purple-and-gold triple-ringed star in the table's center and made his four-point
bows. Most of the noise seemed to be the offering and taking of bets as to how long the
challenger would last.