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

incipient Icarus started at the bar again, picking up speed with each step. With agility amazing
for one so old and so soused, the man soared high and gained the top of the 'oar in a single
bound.

Up he went, up, up, an arm outstretched for the ceiling. Barely he missed one of the floating
pseudo-clouds. There followed a satisfying and by now familiar crash from the other side of the
bar. Plasticine jugs and unbreakable glass joined in a rainbow-colored fountain and bounced to


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the. floor. Money exchanged hands in the crowd.

After a lingering pause, the first mate decided on a new course. He would try reason. Besides, the
fellow hadn't gotten up yet. Perhaps he'd gone and croaked himself. That would save everyone a lot
of trouble.

Gesturing to the sub-engineers, he tiptoed up to the badly scuffed maplewood and peered cautiously
over the top.

No such luck.

True, the fellow was momentarily incapacitated, Having entangled himself in the now completely
inoperable mechbar. Put he was snorting and mumbling with dismaying energy.

"Sir, I appeal to your moral sense. Public drunkenness is bad enough. Eliminating our evening bar
business, not to mention the bar, is worse. But your refusal to heed the admo-nitions of a ship's
crew in free space is insulting. What have we done to offend you?"

After a short search in the region of the floor, the man seemed to find his feet. Staggering more
or less upright, he put two huge fists on the bar and leaned forward.

"Offend me? OFFEND ME!"

The mate shrank from. that spiritual effluvia and tactfully turned his head to one side. It was
pure self-defense. Surely they could put the man away. He was obviously flammable and constituted
a real danger to the ship.

The eyes waggled until they came to rest on the bottle gripped tightly in one paw. He drained half
the remainder.

"Offend me!" be blurted again. "Listen, you unmentionable hazard to navigation, that piddle-pot
swine over there," and he jabbed a great knobby finger in the direction of an espe-cially smug-
looking young gambler, "that piece of plith-seed laid claim to a greater knowledge of posigravity
than I. Than me. ME! Can you fancy that?"

"I'm not sure," the mate replied. He was experiencing some difficulty in following the other's
train of thought. Maybe the local change in the atmosphere had something to do with it. The two
sub-engineers were edging around to one side of the bar. If he could keep this creature talking