"Gordon R. Dickson - The Right to Arm Bears" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

about!"
"Why, what's what all about?" asked Joshua, pausing halfway to the door to the outer office.
"WellтАФeverything!" burst out John. "Why was I drafted? I was all set to trans-ship to McBanen's
Planet to join my government exploration outfit, and this girl from the local embassy on Vega
Seven where I was, came up and pulled my passport and said I was drafted to here. Nobody explained
anything."
"Dear me! They didn't? And you just came along to Dilbia here by courier ship, without askingтАФ"
"Well, I'm as good a citizen as anyone else," said John, defensively. "I mean I may not like the
draft, but I realize the necessity for it. They said you needed me. I came. But I'd just like to
know what it's all about before I start getting into the job."
"Of course, of course!" said Joshua. "Well, it's really nothing. Miss Lamorc, this young
sociologist girl, the one I was talking about, got kidnapped, that's all. By a Dilbian. We want
you to go bring her back. Old Shaking Knees in the next room is the father of Boy Is She Built.
And it was the fact that the Streamside Terror wanted Boy Is She Built that caused all this ruckus
which ended up with the Terror kidnapping Miss Lamorc. You'll see," said Joshua, starting off
toward the door again, "it's all very simple. It'll all straighten out for you once you get into
it."
"But I don't seeтАФ" insisted John, doggedly, following him.
"What?" Joshua hesitated with his hand on the door latch.
"What all this has to do with my work. Why do you want a biochemist to bring back some woman who'd
been kidnapped?"
"But we don't particularly want a biochemist," said Joshua. "What we want is a rough, tough laddie
with excellent physical reflexes of the kind that would take top honors in a decathlon
competition. It isn't your brains we want, Mr. Tardy, it's your brawn." He opened the door.
"You'll find it's all very simple once you get the hang of it. Come along, my dear boy. After
you."

CHAPTER 2
Politely but firmly herded forward by the little diplomat, John found himself pushed into the
large outer office of the Human Embassy on Dilbia, at Humrog, his head still spinning from
Joshua's last words and the odd Dilbian names. Who, he wondered confusedly and in particular, was
Boy Is She Built? The obvious conclusion, in terms of a seven foot-plus Dilbian female accoutered
in little more than her natural furry pelt, was a little mind-shaking to imagine.
The moment, however, was not the proper one for imaginings, no matter how mind-shaking. Reality
was being too overpowering to leave room for anything else. The first thing to strike John as the
door closed behind him, was the scale of the room he was entering. The inner office had been a
reassuringly human cell tucked away in a corner of gargantuan Dilbian architecture. Desk and
chairs had been to John's own fit.
This outer office, for reasons of diplomatic politeness, was furnished in the outsize Dilbian
scale. The heavy wall logs allowed for headroom up to fifteen feet below the log rafters. The
bottom of the crudely glazed windows were on a level with John's chin. Several tables and straight-
backed chairs fitted the rest of the furnishings by being of the same uncomfortable (by human
standards) largeness. A quart-sized ink pot, and a hand-whittled pen holder about sixteen inches
long on one of the tables, completed the picture.
Not this, though, nor the hypno training, quite served to prepare John adequately for his first
close-up encounter with a pair of the Dilbian natives. These two were standing not a dozen feet


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