"Edmond Hamilton - Whats It Like Out There" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

I was feeling shaky again by the time I got to down-
town L.A. I went in a bar and had a double bourbon and
it make me feel a little better.
I went out and found a cabby and asked him to drive me
out to San Gabriel. He was a fat man with a broad red face.
"Hop right in, buddy," he said. "Say, you're one of those
Mars guys, aren't you?"
I said, "That's right."
"Well, well," he said. "Tell me, how was it out there?"
"It was a pretty dull grind, in a way," I told him.
"I'll bet it was!" he said, as we started through traffic.
"Me, I was in the Army in World War Two, twenty years
ago. That's just what it was, a dull grind nine tenths of the
time. I guess it hasn't changed any."
"This wasn't any Army expedition," I explained. "It was a
United Nations one, not an Army onebut we had officers
and rules of discipline like the Army."
"Sure, it's the same thing," said the cabby. "You don't
need to tell me what it's like, buddy. Why, back there in
'forty-two, or was it 'forty-three?anyway, back there I re-
member that. . ."
I leaned back and watched Huntington Boulevard slide
past. The sun poured in on me and seemed very hot, and the
air seemed very thick and soupy. It hadn't been so bad up on
the Arizona plateau, but it was a little hard to breathe down
here.
The cabby wanted to know what address in San Gabriel.
I got the little packet of letters out of my pocket and found
the one that had "Martin Valinez" and a street address on
the back. I told the cabby and put the letters back into my
pocket.
I wished now that I'd never answered them.
But how could I keep from answering when Joe Valinez'
parents wrote to me at the hospital? And it was the same
with Jim's girl, and Walter's family. I'd had to write back,
and the first thing I knew I'd promised to come and see
them, and now if I went back to Ohio without doing it I'd
feel like a heel. Right now, I wished I'd decided to be a
heel.
The address was on the south side of San Gabriel, in a
section that still had a faintly Mexican tinge to it. There was
a little frame grocery store with a small house beside it, and
a picket fence around the yard of the house; very neat, but
a queerly homely place after all the slick California stucco.
I went into the little grocery, and a tall, dark man with
quiet eyes took a look at me and called a woman's name in
a low voice and then came around the counter and took my
hand.
"You're Sergeant Haddon," he said. "Yes. Of course.
We've been hoping you'd come."