"Gardner F. Fox - Temptress Of The Time Flow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fox Gardner F)

Trenton managed to laugh. "Puff out? The universe? It's a reason,
but--do you really mean that, sir?"
"I'm not in the habit of taking a man's life and identity away from him
and making him someone else, captain. I don't hold my job to play at
whimsy. I said what I mean and I mean what I said!"
"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."
The Interrogator waved a hand. "All we know is that the trouble is
somewhere in the Majorca region of Procyon-6. You remember Beutel?
One of Mars' greatest scientists. He found the trouble, warned us by
space-beam, just before the natives got him."
"The natives, sir? You mean the trolyates, the dappled race of Procyon's
sixth planet."
"I don't mean the trolyates. If I had, I'd've said so. I mean whatever
Beutel called them in his spacebeam dispatch. We all thought he meant
natives. Maybe he didn't. But anyway, they got him."
"You've made other attempts," Trenton said. He stated the words
instead of asking a question.
The Interrogator looked at Trenton oddly. He said, "We lost three
space-battlers and four cruisers. We rushed land cavalry from Titon. We
sent engineers. They never came back."
Trenton gaped at him. "So what in the name of Daneb do you want me
to do?"
 The Interrogator laughed. "Solve the riddle. The Chiefs think one man
could get in, learn where to go, what to be afraid of. If we could only get
our men there, to take measurements and graphs! We're like men who
know that a bomb is about to explode, but are tied to chairs and so are
unable to stop it. You will go, Trenton? The Chiefs say your record is the
best one in all the Fleet."
"Yes," nodded Trenton, "I'll go."
THEY SENT him to the surgeons, who did a plastic job on his face.
Then he was shipped over to the psychiatric ward where mental experts
took a dozen charts of him, hypnotized him, fed him full of planned
neural-reaction impulses and turned him out--a different man.
He was surprised, seeing himself in a mirror after they were through
with him. He was looking at a total stranger. He was seeing a hardened
space tramp, the kind that beat from Earth to Antares or any other of the
seventeen star ports, peddling his disintor or his muscles to fight pirates
or alien soldiers. He was big and heavily muscled; they hadn't taken his
body from him but they'd toughened it, made him bigger and stronger.
His face was rugged, and ruthless brown eyes stared at his reflection.
Trenton felt a pulse of fear ripple in him.
What would he be like--this different Trenton?
The Interrogator walked around him, nodding. "No one will know you.
You can call yourself what you want. They've done a fine job. One of their
best!"
Trenton laughed harshly. "I'm different. I'm not the careful, trained
officer I was. I feel bubbly, like champagne. I could even--betray you."
The Interrogator was serious. "I know. It's a risk we have to take. But we
have to do it this way. We don't know what we're up against. We feel a
tough character would have a better chance. If he has any chance at all!"