"Harry Harrison - SSR 06 - A Stainless Steel Rat is Born" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

The last thing I wanted to do was hear his decision now. Things were not going as I had planned,
not at all. Action

was required. I acted. My scream drowned out the judge's words. Still screaming I dived headlong
from the prisoner's dock, shoulder-rolled neatly on the floor, and was

across the room before my shocked audience could even consider moving.
"You will write no more scurrilous lies about me, you grubbing hack," I shouted. As I whipped
the terminal

A STAINLESS STEEL BAT IS BORN

from the reporter's hands and crashed it to the floor. Then stamped the six-hundred-buck machine
into worthless junk. I dodged around him before he could grab me and pelted towards the door. The
policeman there grabbed at meтАФ then folded when I planted my foot in his stomach.
I could probably have escaped then, but escape at this point wasn't part of my plan. I fumbled
with the door handle until someone grabbed me, then struggled on until I was overwhelmed.
This time I was manacled as I stood in the dock and there was no more Jimmy-my-boy talk from the
judge. Someone had found him a new gavel and he waved it in my direction, as though wishing to
brain me with it. I growled and tried to look surly.
"James Bolivar diGriz," he intoned. "I sentence you to the maximum penalty for the crime that
you have committed. Hard labor in the city jail until the arrival of the next League ship,
whereupon you will be sent to the nearest place of correction for criminal therapy." The gavel
banged. "Take him away."
This was more like it. I struggled against my cuffs and spat curses at him so he wouldn't show
any last moment weaknesses. He didn't. Two burly policemen grabbed me and hauled me bodily out of
the courtroom and jammed

me, not too gently, into the back of the black Maria. Only after the door had been slammed and
sealed did I sit back and relaxтАФand allow myself a smile of victory.
Yes, victory, I mean that. The whole point of the operation was to get arrested and sent to
prison. I needed some on-the-job training.
There is method in my madness. Very early in life, probably about the time of my Get-Stuffed
successes, I began to seriously consider a life of crime. For a lot of reasonsтАФnot the least of


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which was that I enjoyed being a criminal. The financial awards were great; no other job paid more
for less work. And, I must be truthful, I enjoyed the feeling of superiority when I made the rest
of the world look like chumps. Some may say that is a

A STAINLESS STEEL BAT IS BORN

juvenile emotion. PerhapsтАФbut it sure is a pleasurable

one.
About this same time I was faced with a serious problem. How was I to prepare myself for the
future? There had to be more to crime than lifting Get-Stuffed bars. Some of the answers I saw