（外文电子版资料）A. Bertram Chandler - Firebrand.pdf

file:///F|/rah/Chandler,%20Bertram%20-%20Firebrand.txt FirebrandFirebrand by A Bertram Chandler FIRE BRAND! 1 FIRE BRAND! By A. Bertram Chandler 2 FIRE BRAND! by A. Bertram Chandler Pulse-Pounding Feature-Length Novelet of Vengeance on Venus! Could this then be the notorious Firbrand, and the thing at her slim waist the notorious, blood Weapon? This small dark woman with hair cropped almost like a mans--could she have pirated the Terran spaceliner? But Fleming knew hed have his answers perhaps sooner than he wished. . . . CHAPTER I HE CAME slowly out the door of the trading post. He was mopping his brow with a large, gaudily patterned hankerchief. It was hot inside the garish, shoddy building, in spite of all the efforts of the air conditioning plant. It was hotter outside. And the trader cursed softly, without enthusiasm, as a matter of routine. He cursed the heat, the humidity, the perspiration that dripped from the tip of his high-bridged nose, that ran in clammy rivulets down his smooth, hairless body, that saturated the loin-cloth that was his only clothing. It was almost sunset. The blur of light--hazy, diffuse--that was all that was ever seen of the sun from Venus, hung low above the western horizon, turning the sullen yellow of the sky to hot gold. Eastward, darkly ominous shadows were already creeping up the eternal overcast. And there was a faint flicker of lightning, a low growl of thunder, sensed rather than heard. Inland from the post stretched the marshy plains, the lush, low jungle. Distant, more than half shrouded by mists, were the unpretentious undulations of the smooth hills. And to the north was the sea--like the sky above it, a dirty yellow. Little tired wavelets collapsed in utter exhausttion upon the grey beach, well below the line of oozing, gelatinous scum that was high water mark. And there was a brief flurry of foam as something big and black