"Alan Dean Foster - Icerigger 1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

The man in the Antares bar-lounge didn't quite bang his bead on the curved star-ceiling on this,
his fourth attempt. Or maybe it was his fifth. This failure came as a disappointment to a number
of the luxurious lounge's more vocal occupants.

When standing erect-a rare happenstance, of late-the fellow stood just under two meters tall. A
haberdasher worth his salt would have estimated his mass at about two hundred kilos. This not
counting the booze he'd been putting away at a prodigious rate. That he'd even managed to come
close to the roof of the lounge and its simulacrum Terran sky was due in part to his considerable
stature.

Starting from the far end of the lounge he'd make a mad elephant sprint toward the bar, leap onto
the polished maple-wood counter, and soar ceilingward from that deep-grained launch pad. A reach,
stretch, grab, and down he'd come in a spectacular displacement of plastic bottles, glasses, and
swizzle sticks. Whereupon he'd fight off the angry Mailings of the robot bartender, now on the
verge of electron psychosis, stagger be-tween the tables, and try again.

Now he struggled to his feet, downed another slug of what-ever it was he was currently drinking,
and stumbled toward his launch point. His elegantly clad, youngish cheering section spurred him
along. Among this group, the sporting blood was up. Bets continued to be exchanged. Would he
finally kill himself by falling on his swozzled skull this fifth (or sixth) time? Or would he
simply knock himself out by successfully cracking it against the roof?

Three-dimensional cumulus clouds, fat and fleecy, drifted across the dome. For all their apparent
reality they were only clever projections on treated duralloy. Still, while this kangaroo-
brother's head was clearly solid bone, in any conjunction of the two the gentle clouds would
surely win out.

There was a stir at the back of the room. Bobbing like emerald corks among the laughing,
applauding gamblers and the outraged but intrigued patrons were the first mate and two sub-
engineers of the Antares. For the last fifteen minutes their prime objective in life had been to
bring down this galloping, great, aged simian with as little damage to self and company property
as possible. So far their efforts had come to zilch. And they were beginning to draw a few laughs
themselves.

Now the first mate, who was an educated man and spent most of his work time planning overdrive
maneuvers and juggling the grav field of a small artificial sun-mass, didn't think it was even a
tiny bit funny. Matter of fact, he was just about fed up.

There was no point in re-checking the book, though. Com-pany regs specifically forbade shooting a
paying passenger, no matter how obnoxious. Other methods had so far met with abject failure. One
of the sub-engineers had already taken a steel-like straight-arming from the hurtling acrobat. He
wiped his lower lip and considered braining the anthropoid sot with a chair. He could always plead
temporary insanity. Pension or no pension.

"Spread out, boys, here he comes again."

Waving a half-filled bottle of Uriah's Heep and howling at the top of his astonishing lungs, the