"E. C. Tubb - Dumarest 30 - Symbol of Terra" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tubb E. C)

sleep for a while." She frowned at his expression. "You don't believe me.
Look for yourself." She pointed to where a gaudy tuft of feathers stood in
the grass beyond the bench. "That's what I shot at you. You can check it."

"There's an easier way." Dumarest lifted the gun and aimed it at her
body. Deliberately he thumbed back the hammer. "Two barrels," he said.
"Two charges. Let's see if they're both the same."

She watched, wide-eyed as he moved to place her between himself and
the bench. A hand lifted to her mouth as he began to close his finger on
the trigger but she made no other sign of fear. Not even when he fired.

"Well?"

Dumarest looked at the dart standing from the wood of the bench.
Perhaps it was as harmless as she'd claimed or perhaps she'd only thought
it to be harmless. The latter, he guessed, she hadn't flinched from the
decisive test.

He said, "Did Chenault give you the gun?"

"Yes."
 "Why? What were you supposed to do with it?"

"Sometimes there are predators. They come into the valley and hunt
the creatures here. When they do I take care of them."

"And visitors?" Dumarest shrugged as she made no answer. It was
prudent to be cautious on even the most civilized of worlds and, in the
Burdinnion, few were that. "Were you born here on Lychen?"

"No."

"Where then? Solis?" A guess and a wrong one as the shake of her head
signified. "It's just that you remind me of someone I knew once. She had
the same color hair as your own."

A red which burned in his heart like a flame. One which would never
die as the memory of Kalin would never die. Kalin whom he had loved.
Long gone now, the spirit which had won him dissipated, dead, leaving
only the memory of a shape. Of eyes and hair and skin and mouth andтАж
andтАж
***
And, suddenly, she was before him.

A bird broke the spell, rising with a thrum of pinions, leaves falling
with a rustleтАФsounds of potential danger which jerked him from a dream.
An illusion in which time had encapsulated and a person long gone was
again at his side. Standing as she had so often stood before, looking up at
his superior height, the long, clean line of her throat before his eyes, the