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

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"Sexactusly," the man said, then belched. "So we are en-gaged in a scientific experiment to settle
the matter once and fen all. You ain't one of them anti-empiricists, is you, bub?"

"Good lord, no," the mate admitted truthfully enough.

"Yeh. Well, we calculated a bit of the ship's field, see? An' according to my calculations, I
ought to be able to touch the roof, there."

"That one over our heads?"

"Yeh, that's the one. You ain't so stupid as you look, matey. Now you unnerstand what I'm doing,
eh?"

"Of course." The sub-engineers were not quite in position yet. "Still, while I'm sure you know
your computations, that young chap you pointed out is the son of a well-known yachts-man and
something of an interplanetary sprinter himself. He just might know what he's talking about."

He stared across at the exploding shock of white hair, a virgin corona; at the great hooked beak
of a nose, chin like a hatchet-head, oil-black eyes under break-wave brows, and the gold ring in
the right ear. The hair on the man's bare arms, though, was blond. And there were fewer wrinkles
in that tanned face than you would suppose at first glance. The ones that were there, though, were
really canyon wrinkles, genuine gully-gapers. No question but that the nose bad come first, like
Bererac's, and the face had been constructed around it, bits and scraps sewn on here and there.
The wrinkles fell neatly in place, like seams in leather.


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"I'm not sure, however," continued the mate, "who you are." And the court will want to know, too,
he thought.

For a moment he thought the other might be having an attack. Still clenching the bottle in one
hand, the man shook his fist at the first mate and the whole lounge in general.

"By the Heavenly Hosts and the whole Horse's Head, I'm Skua September, be who! In the manner of
men and all other beings I can out-drink, out-fight, out-fly, out-sleep, out-eat, out-whore, out-
run, out-talk, out-shout and out-love any man in this end of the Spiral Arm!

September seemed more than willing to continue this cata-logue of dubious attributes til the
millennium. The tirade, however, was interrupted by a belch of such brontosaurian proportions that
it momentarily rattled everyone in the lounge.

At that point the two lesser ratings both hit him from be-hind and the resultant menage a trois
crashed to the floor in front of the bar. One of them snatched up a bottle full of mould-gold
something or other and hefted it over his head. But the first mate extended a restraining arm.