"K. D. Wentworth - Black On Black" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wentworth K D)

wound he had taken in his last action back on Enjas Two. He breathed deeply of the unfamiliar air.
Certainly this barren landscape held no sense of home. He had a sudden pang for the rich air of Earth
and the Lakota hills of his youth.

Behind them, the walkway shimmered, then disappeared as its generating field terminated. The small
automated shuttle that had ferried them down from the supply ship in orbit hummed into life and lifted on
antigravs back into the hazy amber sky.

Mitsu grimaced. "Too late to change your mind now," she murmured, shading her eyes.

Heyoka shifted uneasily in the hot sun as the memory of Enjas Two swept back:the sandy green beach,
the hot white dwarf star dominating a silver-blue sky, the brittle silence that seemed to go on
forever after it was all over . . .

He thrust the memory away. Even if he recovered fully from his injury, Bill Rajman, his captain and
superior, would not allow him to return to duty until he could explain what had happened that day.
Perhaps here on Anktan, he could find some answers.

"I still say you shouldn't have come," he said to Mitsu. He felt excitement overlaid with uneasiness as the
six hrinn slowed their burly mounts to a ground-covering walk. Five of them had fur ranging from yellow
to gray to dark red, but the one who held his gaze was black with a spectacular white throat.

"Hey, it's my leave." Mitsu slid a sonic blade out of the sheath in her boot and casually thumbed it on. "I
can spend it anywhere I damn well please."

The natives were closing fast, riding their humpbacked steeds with apparent ease. Heyoka drew in the
deep musk of hrinnti fur, subtly like and yet unlike his own, and blood began to pound in his ears. He felt
flushed, as though all his capillaries had suddenly dilated, tasted cinnamon on the back of his tongue, the
richness of melted butter in his throat. Pheromones, he told himself, resisting the urge to pant away the
excess heat he was generating. He had never been exposed to scent molecules from his own species
before.

The waves of heat beating down from the red sun made the colorfully robed bodies shimmer. Their
beasts' feet crunched over the last few feet of sand-littered ground and the breath caught in his throat;
they were all sotall . Something indigenous to this world, perhaps the greater gravity, or a nutrient in the
soil or vegetation, had given them more height than he had and, no doubt, more strength as well. They
carried their maned heads high, magnificent and proud, clearly savage.

Stopping a short distance away, the six sat their beasts for a long stretched-out moment as the breeze
whipped their lengthy plumes of mane. The black-coated hrinn's mane was bound with green cord to
match its loose overtunic and breeches, and swept nearly to its feet. Heyoka had never let his grow half
so long.

The gray-coated hrinn drew its thin, large-boned body up proudly and threw a single sentence in guttural
Hrinnti at him.

It was female, he realized suddenly, although he could not say how he knew. If anything, her voice had
more resonance than his own. And, although he had studied under hours of deepsleep during the journey
to this planet, he had difficulty with her accent. Then the fur on the back of his shoulders stood on end as
he grasped her meaning: "Stand up." The inner nictitating membranes of his eyes spasmed shut for a