"Blish, James - A Case Of Conscience" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blish James)

with both Felicia and Honuphrius-the latter the apparent prime villain
and husband of Anita. It was Magravius, who seemed to admire Honuphrius,
who had been urged by the slave Mauritius to solicit Anita, seemingly
under the aegis of Honuphrius himself. This, however, had come to Anita
through her tirewoman Fortissa, who was or at one time had been the
common-law wife of Mauritius and had borne him children-so that the whole
story had to be weighed with the utmost caution. And that entire initial
confession of Honuphrius had come out under torture-voluntarily consented
to, to be sure, but still torture. The Fortissa-Mauritius relationship
was even more dubious, really only a supposition of the commentator
Father Ware--



"Ramon, give me a hand, will you?" Cleaver shouted suddenly. "I'm stuck,
and-and I don't feel well."

The Jesuit biologist arose in alarm, putting the novel aside. Such an
admission from Cleaver was unprecedented.

The physicist was sitting on a pouf of woven rushes, stuffed with a
sphagnumlike moss, which was bulging at the equator under his weight. He
was half-way out of his glass-fiber jungle suit, and his face was white
and beaded with sweat, although his helmet was already off. His
uncertain, stubby fingers tore at a jammed zipper.

"Paul! Why didn't you say you were ill in the first place? Here, let go
of that; you're only making things worse. What happened?"

"Don't know exactly," Cleaver said, breathing heavily but relinquishing
the zipper. Ruiz%Sanchez knelt beside him and began to work it carefully
back onto its tracks. "Went a ways into the jungle to see if I could spot
more pegmatite lies. It's been in the back of my mind that a pilot-plant
for turning out tritium might locate here eventually--ought to be able to
produce on a prodigious scale."

"God forbid," Ruiz%Sanchez said under his breath.

"Hm? Anyhow, I didn't see anything. A few lizards, hoppers, the usual
thing. Then I ran up against a plant that looked a little like a
pineapple, and one of the spines jabbed right through my suit and nicked
me. Didn't seem serious, but--"



"But we don't have the suits for nothing. Let's look at it. Here, put up
your feet and we'll haul those boots off. Where did you get the--oh. Well,
it's angry-looking, I'll give it that. Any other symptoms?"

"My mouth feels raw," Cleaver complained.

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