"C M Kornbluth - The Altar At Midnight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

"Paddy says he'll buy drinks for the house the day anybody uglier than he is comes in."



Oswiak's wife waddled over for the order and the kid asked us what we'd have. I figured I could start
drinking, so it was three double Scotches.
 After the second round, Paddy started blowing about how they took his arm off without any anesthetics
except a bottle of gin because the red-ball freight he was tangled up in couldn't wait.



That brought some of the other old gimps over to the table with their stories.



Blackie Bauer had been sitting in a boxcar with his legs sticking through the door when the train started
with a jerk. Wham, the door closed. Everybody laughed at Blackie for being that dumb in the first place,
and he got mad.



Sam Fireman has palsy. This week he was claiming he used to be a watchmaker before he began to
shake. The week before, he'd said he was a brain surgeon. A woman I didn't know, a real old Boxcar



Bertha, dragged herself over and began some kind of story about how her sister married a Greek, but
she passed out before we found out what happened.



Somebody wanted to know what was wrong with the kid's faceтАФ Bauer, I think it was, after he came
back to the table.



"Compression and decompression," the kid said. "You're all the time climbing into your suit and out of
your suit. Inboard air's thin to start with. You get a few redlinesтАФthat's these ruptured blood vessels
тАФand you say the hell with the money; all you'll make is just one more trip. But, God, it's a lot of money
for anybody my age! You keep saying that until you can't be anything but a spacer. The eyes are
hard-radiation scars."



"You like dot all ofer?" asked Oswiak's wife politely.