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

They put him on a fast freighter booked for Majorca Port. He was listed
as a worker, but they gave him books to study and a couple of disintors to
play with, and a giant of a Martian to keep the fat off his six-foot frame.
When he hit Procyon-5, he was as solid as bedrock. His eyes were keen and
his brain was sharp, and he could split a bird on the wing with the blue
disintor.
Smoke curled up, blue and thin, from the red tip of a glowette. The girl
with the red hair and the transparent thing that passed for a dress in the
Majorca Port tavern laughed hoarsely. Her blue eyes glittered.
"Three weeks hunting in the slums, and you haven't found it yet," she
mocked him.
Trenton grinned wolfishly. "I'll find it. Somebody knows what happens
to our engineers. Somebody has to send them--wherever they go."
The woman blew smoke at him. Her mouth twisted amusedly. She
asked, "What can you offer for--information?"
Trenton laughed inside his ribs, but he made his face as wooden as the
painted tokens hung on the walls of the tavern. He turned and watched the
gyrations of the nearly naked dancer atop one of the barrrus wood tables.
When he spoke, it was out of the corner of his mouth. "What do you
want?"
She ran a hand up her other bare arm. She whispered, looking at the
dancer. "Safe transportation back to Earth."
Trenton lifted his eyebrows. "You're a star-deport? What bounced you
off Terra? Drugs? A man?"
"Never mind the details," she whispered harshly. "Do you want the
information? Beutel used to come in here once in a while for a few glasses
of procyntal. He took one too many, one night. I helped him to his
apartments. A drunk man tells you a lot of things."
She looked around at the crowd fearfully. "If anyone knew about it,
they'd find me without eyes and tongue on the Hell Desert out beyond the
Port. I've been so scared--"
"Yeah, yeah. Forget your worries. I'll deal with you. Nobody'll know. I'll
write you an order on the Commandant. Take it to him. He'll fix you up
with a new wardrobe and a compartment on the Star Queen."
Her blue eyes drank him up. A flush of color came into the powdered
whiteness of her cheeks. "You'll do all that?"
"For the right information."
The woman leaned across the wooden table. "Play up to me. I'll tell you
on the way...but you have to convince these people...there may be spies.
Funny things have happened since Beutel kicked off."
She was pretty. It wasn't too hard to do what must be done, to convince
the spacemen and dappled trolyates that Trenton was getting high on the
procystal. In the middle of a long kiss, Trenton kicked back his chair and
lifted the woman to her feet.
"Let's go," he muttered, and flung a handful of bills on the wet top of
their table.
They staggered out into the cold night as a burst of drunken laughter
followed them.
TRENTON went by flier as far into the desert as he dared. He shoveled
sand on the ship and left it just another dune. He went on foot into the