"Robert A. Heinlein - Double Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

Heinlein, Robert A - DoubleStar.txt
Chapter 1

If a man walks in dressed like a hick and acting as if he owned the place,
he's a spaceman.
It is a logical necessity. His profession makes him feel like boss of all
creation; when he sets foot dirtside he is slumming among the peasants. As for his
sartorial inelegance, a man who is in uniform nine tenths of the time and is more
used to deep space than to civilization can hardly be expected to know how to dress
properly. He is a sucker for the alleged tailors who swarm around every spaceport
peddling "ground outfits."
I could see that this big-boned fellow had been dressed by Omar the
Tentmaker-padded shoulders that were too big to start with, shorts cut so that they
crawled up his hairy thighs as he sat down, a ruffled chemise that might have looked
well on a cow.
But I kept my opinion to myself and bought him a drink with my last
half-Imperial, considering it an investment, spacemen being the way they are about
money. "Hot jets!" I said as we touched glasses. He gave me a quick glance.
That was my initial mistake in dealing with Dak Broadbent. Instead of
answering, "Clear space!" or, "Safe grounding!" as he should have, he looked me over
and said softly, "A nice sentiment, but to the wrong man. I've never been out."
That was another good place to keep my mouth shut. Spacemen did not often
come to the bar of Casa Ma├▒ana; it was not their Sort of hotel and it's miles from
the port. When one shows up in ground clothes, seeks a dark corner of the bar, and
objects to being called a spaceman, that's his business. I had picked that spot
myself so that I could see without being seen-I owed a little money here and there
at the time, nothing important but embarrassing. I should have assumed that he had
his reasons, too, and respected them.
But my vocal cords lived their own life, wild and free. "Don't give me that,
shipmate," I replied. "If you're a ground hog, I'm Mayor of Tycho City. I'll wager
you've done more drinking on Mars," I added, noticing the cautious way he lifted his
glass, a dead giveaway of low-gravity habits, "than you've ever done on Earth."
"Keep your voice down!" he cut in without moving his lips. "What makes you
sure that I am a voyageur? You don't know me."
"Sorry," I said. "You can be anything you like. But I've got eyes. You gave
yourself away the minute you walked in."
He said something under his breath. "How?"
"Don't let it worry you. I doubt if anyone else noticed. But I see things
other people don't see." I handed him my card, a little smugly perhaps. There is
only one Lorenzo Smythe, the One-Man Stock Company. Yes, I'm "The Great
Lorenzo"-stereo, canned opera, legit-"Pantomimist and Mimicry Artist Extraordinary."
He read my card and dropped it into a sleeve pocket-which annoyed me; those
cards had cost me money-genuine imitation hand engraving. "I see your point," he
said quietly, "but what was wrong with the way I behaved?"
"I'll show you," I said. "I'll walk to the door like a ground hog and come
back the way you walk. Watch." I did so, making the trip back in a slightly
exaggerated version of his walk to allow for his untrained eye-feet sliding softly
along the floor as if it were deck plates, weight carried forward and balanced from
the hips, hands a trifle forward and clear of the body, ready to grasp.
There are a dozen other details which can't be set down in words; the point