"Jack Vance - Alastor 2262 - Trullion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

beautiful stately craft enameled in beige, scarlet and black. The ship dropped like an eagle
toward Welgen and passed beyond Glinnes' range of vision. The voice from the radio cried out in
excitement: -They rise into the air, but here comes the Whelm ship! By the Nine Glories, the Whelm
ship is here. The starmenters can't go into whisk*; they'd burn up from the friction! They must
fight!" The announcer could no longer control his voice for excitement: "The Whelm ship strikes;
the starmenter is disabled!

Hurrah! it drops back into the square. No, no! Oh horror! What horror! It has fallen upon the
market; a hundred persons are crushed! Attention! Bring in all ambulances, all medical men!
Emergency at Welgen! I can hear the sad cries . . . The starmenter ship is broken; still it fights
... a blue ray . . . Another . . . The Whelm ship answers. The starmenters are quiet. Their ship
is broken." The announcer fell quiet a moment, then once more was prompted to excitement. "Now
what a sight! The folk are crying with rage; they swarm in at the starmenters; they drag them
forth . . ." He began to babble, then stopped short and spoke in a more subdued voice. "The
constables have intervened. They have pushed back the crowds and the starmenters are now in
custody, and this to their own rue, as well they know, for they desperately struggle. How they
writhe and kick! It's the pruanshyr for them! They prefer the vengeance of the crowd! . . . What a
dreadful deed they have done upon the hapless town Welgen..."

Jut and Shira worked in the far orchard grafting scions to the apple trees. Glinnes ran to tell
them the news. "... and at last the starmenters were captured and taken away!"

*swhisk: star-drive.

"So much the worse for them," Jut said gruffly, and continued with his work. For a Trill, he was
a man unusually self-
contained and taciturn, traits that had become intensified since the death of Sharue by the
merlings. Shira said, "They'll be sweeping off the prutanshyr. Perhaps we'd better learn the
news."

Jut grunted. "One torturing is much like another. The fire burns, the wheels wrench, the rope
strains. Some folk thrive on it. For my excitement I'll watch hussade." Shira winked at Glinnes.
"One game is much like another. The forwards spring, the water splashes, the sheirl loses her


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clothes, and one pretty girl's belly is much like another's." here speaks the voice of
experience," said Glinnes, and Shira, the most notorious philanderer of the district, guffawed.
Shira did in fact attend the executions with his mother Marucha, though Jut kept Glinnes and Glay
at home
.
Shira and Marucha returned by the late ferry. Marucha was tired and went to bed; Shira, however,
joined Jut, Glinnes and Glay on the verandah and rendered an account of what he had seen. 'Thirty-
three they caught, and had them all in cages out in the square. All the preparations were put up
before their very eyes. A hard lot of men, I must say-I couldn't place their race. Some might have
been Echalites and some might have been Satagones, and one tall white-skinned fellow was said to
be a Blaweg. Unfortunates all, in retrospect. They were naked and painted for shame: heads green,
one leg blue, the other red. All gelded, of course. Oh, the prutanshyr's a wicked place! And to