"Ron Goulart - Spacehawk Inc" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goulart Ron)

Ron Goulart

SPACEHAWK INC.
DAW BOOKS, INC.
DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, PUBLISHES

1301 Avenue of the Americas New York, N. Y. 10019

COPYRIGHT ┬й, 1974, BY RON GOULART All Rights Reserved.

Cover art by Hans Arnold.
FIRST PRINTING, DECEMBER 1974

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PRINTED IN U.S.A.
 Chapter 1
He was glad to see the priest come through the wall.
Kip Bundy rolled out from under the heavyset catman, now distracted, who'd been pummeling
him. He grabbed his trousers off one of the twelve silver bedposts of the floating bed, went hopping and
dodging around the room as he tugged them back on.
"Can we not all work in harmony, brothers and sisters?" asked Father Cog, his right forefinger
still smoking. "For truly, 'tis clearly the will of the Mysterious Something whichтАФ"
"Get the little fleshie before he hightails it through that hole in the wall!" shouted Murdstone Slim,
the catman who'd been jumping up and down on Kip until recently.
Kip was six feet tall, with sandy hair, but he seemed small compared to the huge
three-hundred-pound Slim. "Watch those slurs, Slim," he warned, stopping in front of the oval opening
Father Cog had just cut in the wall of the bedroom. "Making fun of a man's size or components isn't
consideredтАФoof!"
Two slightly smaller catmen tackled Kip. One's head burrowed into his groin, the other got a
shaggy grip on his throat.
"You ain't hardly a man," observed Murdstone Slim, "more a boy."
"He's twenty-seven," the girl on the floating bed pointed out. She was thin, lovely, silver-haired.
Twenty-two years old and wearing a lycra all-season pajama top. The Rehab Bureau tattoo number
showed on her bare upper arm.
"What is chronological age?" asked Father Cog. "For are we not all but babes in the eyes of the
Mysterious Something whichтАФ"
"Break a couple of his limbs!" Slim urged the two catmen who were struggling with Kip.
"Unk," said one of them, as Kip managed to kick him in the knee.
"Ah, this violence," sighed the black-suited android priest. "Tis a sorrowful sight to the
Mysterious Something whichтАФ" He raised his left hand, pointed his forefinger at the furry struggle. A
sizzling yellow beam shot from the tip of his finger.
The catman who'd said "Unk" said it again. He swayed, going slack and falling over onto the
tinted lucite floor.
"That's very neat," remarked Murdstone Slim. "How much would it cost me to haveтАФ"
Father Cog's middle finger hummed.
A sonic wave slammed into Murdstone Slim, lifted him up, threw him back. The catman's large
furry head bonged into one of the dozen bedposts before he toppled down onto a spun-wire rug.
"I hope the Mysterious Something will forgive me for resorting to such measures. Yet, as several
of the oldest texts tell us, itтАФ"
"The other one!" The silver-haired girl waved her hand at Kip, who was being throttled by the