"Adams, Douglas -- So Long and Thanks for All The Fish (4)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Adams Douglas)

place you could afford to do things casually in if you wanted to
stay alive. Any observers in the place would have been mean
hawklike observers, heavily armed, with painful throbbings in
their heads which caused them to do crazy things when they
observed things they didn't like.

One of those nasty hushes had descended on the place, a sort of
missile crisis sort of hush.

Even the evil-looking bird perched on a rod in the bar had
stopped screeching out the names and addresses of local contract
killers, which was a service it provided for free.

All eyes were on Ford Prefect. Some of them were on stalks.

The particular way in which he was choosing to dice recklessly
with death today was by trying to pay for a drinks bill the size
of a small defence budget with an American Express Card, which
was not acceptable anywhere in the known Universe.

"What are you worried about?" he asked in a cheery kind of voice.
"The expiration date? Have you guys never heard of Neo-Relativity
out here? There's whole new areas of physics which can take care
of this sort of thing. Time dilation effects, temporal
relastatics ..."

"We are not worried about the expiration date," said the man to
whom he addressed these remarks, who was a dangerous barman in a
dangerous city. His voice was a low soft purr, like the low soft
purr made by the opening of an ICBM silo. A hand like a side of
meat tapped on the bar top, lightly denting it.

"Well, that's good then," said Ford, packing his satchel and
preparing to leave.

The tapping finger reached out and rested lightly on the shoulder
of Ford Prefect. It prevented him from leaving.

Although the finger was attached to a slablike hand, and the hand
was attached to a clublike forearm, the forearm wasn't attached
to anything at all, except in the metaphorical sense that it was
attached by a fierce doglike loyalty to the bar which was its
home. It had previously been more conventionally attached to the
original owner of the bar, who on his deathbed had unexpectedly
bequeathed it to medical science. Medical science had decided
they didn't like the look of it and had bequeathed it right back
to the Old Pink Dog Bar.

The new barman didn't believe in the supernatural or poltergeists
or anything kooky like that, he just knew an useful ally when he