"Horace Gold - Inside Man & Other Science Fiction Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gold Horace)

so badly."
"People's thoughts," said Thalia uneasily. "I don't know if I like that. I know I
wouldn't feel comfortable around you."
He plumped up the pillow, accidentally dropped it on the floor, tried to decide
whether to pick it up, realized he would fall on top of it.
"Doesn't work that way at all, sweetheart. It'sтАУ" He hunted for an analogy. "It comes
out like machinery."
"Like what?" she exclaimed.
"Here, maybe I can show you." He stood beside the bed and gazed down
searchingly at her.
"Mm тАУ humm. Your radiator is boiling over."
"What a crude way to put it!"
He continued standing there, his gaze gone remote and unseeing.
"Well?" Thalia asked irritably. "How's your radiator?"
"That's what I'm trying to find out," he replied in a distant voice.
"And?"
"It's percolating a little," he answered.
She threw the covers aside. "Come on, get in," she said. "It's better than nothing."

PERSONNEL PROBLEM
Dowd caught hold of a stanchion and braced himself тАУ it was easier to be forceful
when you didn't float off the ground with every word.
He said persuasively: "You can still change your mind, Eggleston.
"Where are you going to get another job like this? Look, you've been getting ten
shares тАУ how about if we make it twelve? The, committee will go along. That's eighty
thousand dollars a year, man!"
"No," said Eggleston.
"Be reasonable! Ceres isn't as bad as all that as asteroids go тАУ it's in a class by itself.
Maybe we're a little cramped, but we're still getting organized тАУ why, next year we'll
have it fixed up so you can I get annual leave on Earth andтАУ"
"No!" said Eggleston, even more positively than before.
Dowd blew through his nostrils, once, hard, a snort of anger and exasperation. Being
general manager of the miners' co-op that had the Ceres franchise was an unrelieved
headache. Here he was promising this nincompoop Eggleston twelve shares тАУ he
himself had only three, and an able-bodied vacuum-miner, risking his life and his
health every day, got only one. And all because Eggleston had an engineering degree!
"It isn't the money," Eggleston said. "You know what it is."
"No" said Dowd grimly. "I don't. No."
Eggleston looked longingly at the open port of the ship. He hesitated and set down
his bag тАУ eight hundred and fifty pounds of personal belongings and equipment. It
would weigh that much on Earth; here it was only a feather-light balloon.
He said tiredly: "I've told you dozens of times. I don't see why I'm bothering to tell
you again. You didn't understand it before and you won't understand it now."
"Try me!" said Dowd. "Maybe I'll finally get it!"
"All right. There's no work for me here, Dowd. And who wants to live inside a
chunk of rock?"
"Two thousand of us do!"
"Then do it!" snapped Eggleston. "Not me! I'm tired of never, seeing the sun тАУ
except through filters, after I put on a spacesuit, I'm tired of breathing last year's, air.
I'm tired of living with two thousand miners and their squalling brats, all cooped up