"C M Kornbluth - Make Mine Mars UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

"This is no time for sympathy," I said. "Now one side or a flipper offЧI gotta go to work."

"No sympathy," he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. He fumbled oddly in his belt, then showed me a little white capsule. "Clear your head, huh? Work like lightning, you bet!"

I was interested. "How much?"

"For you, friend, nothing. Because I hate seeing fellows suffer with big head."

"Beat it," I told him, and shoved past through the door.

That pitch of his with a free sample meant he was pushing

J-K-B. I was in enough trouble without adding an unbreakable

addiction to the stuff. If I'd taken his free sample, I would

, have been back to see him in 12 hours, sweating blood for

more. And that time he would have named his own price.

I fell into an eastbound chair and fumbled a quarter

into the slot The thin, cold air of the pressure dome was

clearing my head already. I was sorry for all the times Fd

I cussed a skinflint dome administration for not supplying a richer air mix or heating the outdoors more lavishly. I felt
food enough to shave, and luckily had my razor in my wallet. By the time the chair was gliding past the building where Interstellar News had a floor, I had the whiskers off my jaw and most of the sawdust out of my hair.

The floater took me up to our floor while I tried not to think of what McGillicuddy would have to say.

The newsroom was full of noise as usual. McGillicuddy vu in the copydesk slot chewing his way through a pile of dpatches due to be filed on the pressure dome split for A.M.

Хewscasts in four minutes by the big wall clock. He fed his copy, without looking, to an operator battering the keys of fte old-fashioned radioteletype that was good enough to serve

Хor local clients.

"Two minutes short!" he yelled at one of the men on the "Gimme a brightener! Gimme a god-damned bright-'P* The rim man raced to the receiving ethertypes from rCammadion, Betelgeuse, and the other Interstellar bureaus. Be yanked an item from one of the clicking machines and

ХcaJed it at McGillicuddy, who slashed at it with his pencil and passed it to the operator. The tape the operator was cooing started through the transmitter-distributor, and on all local clients' radioteletypes appeared:

ХJto

"FIFTEEN-MINUTE INTERSTELLAR NEWSCAST AM MARS PRESSURE DOMES."

Everybody leaned hack and lit up. McGillicuddy's eye fell on me, and I cleared my throat

"Got a cold?" he asked genially.

"Nope. No cold."