"C M Kornbluth - The Goodly Creatures" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

Mars Room or the booking of Greenhough. Maybe the senior partner had given a false
nameтАФWilkins?тАФor maybe the stories had been killed because Greenhough and Brady did some
institutional advertising. Maybe there was some mysterious interlock between Greenhough and Brady
and the papers high up on some misty alp that Farwell had never glimpsed.



Don't worry about it, he told himself savagely. You gave him good advice, the thing's going to blow
over, Clarahan wouldn't have taken it anyway. He hoped Pete Messier in New York wouldn't hear
about it and try to use it as a lever to pry him out of the spot he held, the spot Pete Messier coveted.
Maybe there was some way he could get somebody in the New York office to keep an eye on Messier
and let him know how he^was doing, just to get something he could counter-punch with when Messier
pulled something like that garbled message stunt.



The intercom buzzed and Grace said, "Angelo wants to see you. He says it's personal."



"Send him in."



The kid was beaming. He looked pretty goodтАФnot raw and jumpy; just happy.



"I want to say thanks and good-bye, Mr. Farwell," he told the branch manager. "Look!"



The plastic-laminated card said "WORK PERMIT" and "Brother Angelo Libonari" and "International
Union of Spacemen, Spacedockworkers and Rocket Maintenance Men, Unaffiliated (ISU-IND)" and
"Member in Good Standing" and other things.



"So that was the game," said Farwell slowly. "We take you and we train you at a loss hoping that some
day you'll turn out decent copy for us and as soon as you have a thousand bucks saved up you quit like a
shot and buy a work card to be a wiper on a rocket. Well, I hope you show a little more loyalty to your
space line than you showed us."



Angelo's face drooped in miserable surprise. "I never thoughtтАФ" he stuttered. "I didn't mean to run out,
Mr. Farwell. I'll give two weeks notice if you wantтАФa month? How about a month?"