http://www.poromenos.org/tutorials/python offers a Python tutorial that claims to teach you Python in 10 minutes. It's certainly not a full introduction into all aspects of Python, but it is a surprisingly good introduction to the basic concepts of the Python language and it is very well organized to make learning quick. While reading this tutorial won't enable you to go off and start writing Python code, if you need to read and understand some existing code, reading this tutorial in conjunction with a reference will probably get you to the point of being able to understand what the code is trying to do.