"Harrison, Harry - Bill, the Galactic Hero 5 - on the Planet of Zombie Vampires" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

"I what?" said Bill.
"He stays your side of da room," Bruiser snarled, leaning on Slasher. "I find him on my bunk, chop his smelly legs off. Then start on yours."
"He does kind of stink," Bill admitted. "Thanks for the offer - but I don't need a dog."
"He needs you, and that is a law of nature that cannot be changed," a short and zoftig woman intoned ominously. "It is also Barfer's nature to roll around in the compost bin in the captain's okra room. We can't keep him out of there. Maybe you'll have better luck."
"Thanks," said Bill. "What's your name?"
"Tootsie, big boy. And what's yours?" She ran delicate fingers through her short-cropped blond hair and took a deep breath that impressed Bill immensely. She didn't look like a dangerous criminal, not in the slightest.
"Bill. With two L's. The same as the officers spell it." Then he remembered the call of duty. "What are you in for?" he asked, putting on his serious MP face.
"They say I deserted. Went AWOL. Over the hill. Hit the road."
"Did you?"
"Of course not. My time card got demagnetized by a broken drink machine so it didn't register. I was at my desk the whole time."
Duty still called, like it or not. He forced his attention away from Tootsie.
"And you, Uhuru. What did you do to get stuck here?"
"They charged me with blowing up an orphanage," he said with a wide grin. "I'm a big fan of gunpowder."
"Gunpowder?" asked Bill, staring at the heavily muscled arms of the huge man. "Orphanage? Little kids and all that?"
"I was framed," said Uhuru. "All I really did was accidentally drop a homemade firecracker down the officer's latrine. It made a big bang, but there weren't no orphans in sight, just a lot of exploded waste products and a very nervous lieutenant."
"Rambette?"
"They say I have a violent personality, believe it or not. And all on account of a little misunderstanding."
"Misunderstanding?"
"A corporal took me out to dinner. How romantic, I thought, I was so young and innocent. He embraced me, rained kisses on my fresh lips, ran his fingers down my ... that kind of thing. Filled with fear and trepidation I threatened to cut one of them off for him and he got a little upset. But would not desist. In self-defense I rejected his advances. He was out of his cast inside two months. I didn't do anything but protect myself. It was nothing to get all excited about."
"That sounds reasonable," Bill adjudicated. "Larry?"
"Ask Moe."
"Moe?"
"Ask Curly."
"Curly?"
"I don't know nothing. And if I did know something, I'd blame it on Larry. Or maybe Moe. As far as I know, we are all innocent, just victims of a passing bad time. Of course, I can only speak for myself. I can't remember the last time we three agreed on anything. Larry's dumb as a rock, and Moe's a blight on the family tree."
"All these sound like minor infractions," said Bill. "Or maybe no infractions at all. I don't think we'll have any trouble this trip. All we've got to do is keep our noses clean until we get to Beta Draconis. That sounds pretty simple."
Barfer the dog leaned heavily against Bill's good leg and farted. Bill, unthinkingly, scratched the creature's smelly head - then drew his hand away and wiped his fingers on his pants leg.
"Me," said Bruiser. "You forget me."
"Just coming to you, good buddy," Bill smarmed. "What did you really do?"
"Cut legs off MP," grinned Bruiser. "Me and Slasher did right fine job."
Bill swallowed hard and smiled ingratiatingly.
"But I had good reason," leered Bruiser, hefting Slasher up to his shoulder.
"I'm sure you did," said Bill with relief.
"Bowb made me mad," smiled Bruiser. "And he had smelly, ugly dog."

CHAPTER 4

Bill stirred the last of his steamed okra around on his plate. It was cold, and had the consistency of month-old celery that had been cooked in a nuclear reactor and then left in the desert sun to decompose.
Five weeks of okra so far, and no end in sight! Bill shuddered. He would even have welcomed some loathsome Trooper chow as a change of pace. The only consolation was that his foot bud was finally beginning to grow out. That was the good news; the bad news was that it was growing out a little strange. For starters, so far it was gray in color, rather than a healthy pink. And there wasn't the hint of a toe yet; just a gray lump a little smaller than his fist. But at least it was long enough so that he could stumble on it, and he had packed away his crutches, hopefully forever. He'd give it time. One thing the military had was plenty of time.
"So how is the crew, Trooper?" asked Captain Blight, greedily downing a porkuswine chop.
"All in order, sir," lied Bill.
He'd learned another lesson: don't rock the boat. Only last week he had tremblingly brought the captain the crew's demands that a change of diet could possibly be in order. The end result of that fiasco had been the withholding of Bill's jelly doughnut for three meals and an imposed day of fasting for the crew. The whole episode had done nothing to improve anyone's morale.
The truth was the crew was getting angry, hot-tempered, short-fused, balky, and sullen. That was on even-numbered days. On odd-numbered days they were obstinate and grouchy and testy. At the best of times they were simply cranky. Bill was caught in the middle and blamed it on bad vibrations, the okra - and their criminal records.
Bill slid the last spoonful of slime into his pocket. Just about the only good thing about his new dog was that Barfer liked okra, loved it, drooled and slobbered over it in a disgusting manner. He was, besides Christianson and Caine, the only creature aboard who could stand the stuff. Of course, Christianson would eat anything, and the reliability of Caine's android taste buds, if he even had any, were open to question.
A dog was the last thing Bill wanted or needed, but he was stuck with Barfer, at least for the duration of the trip. No one else would have anything to do with him. The only saving grace was that the beast had just enough residual sense of survival to stay on Bill's side of the room. Bruiser tended to sit, fondling his axe and glaring at the sordid hound. A steady vegetable diet had done nothing to improve Bruiser's state of mind.
"Aphids," said Caine as the jelly doughnuts were being distributed. "And little green caterpillars, too. Sorry, Captain."
"Say what!" yelled Blight. "Not again!"
"It's a natural progression in a closed environment such as we have aboard ship," said Caine. "They have no predators to kill them off."
"I've got a whole ship full of predators," said Blight, taking a second doughnut. "Bill, get another bug-picking crew together."
"Pepper," suggested Bill. "Back on the farm we used to use a mixture of soap and pepper to control pests. It's easier than picking them off one by one. That's the way we did it when I was young...."