"Keith Laumer - Galactic Odyssey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

some moldy leaves drifted there, and I used the last of my lighter fluid trying to get a lit tle blaze
going, but that turned out like everything else IтАЩd tried lately: a fizzle. One thing about it: My feet
were so numb from the cold I couldnтАЩt feel the blisters from the eighteen miles IтАЩd hiked since my
last ride dumped me at a crossroads, just before dawn.
I had my collar turned up, for what good that might do, which wasnтАЩt much; the coat felt like
wet newspaper. Both elbows were out of it, and two of the buttons were gone. Funny; three weeks
ago it had been decent-looking enough to walk into a second-class restaurant in without attracting
more than the usual quota of hostile stares. Three weeks: ThatтАЩs all it took to slide from a shaky
toehold in the economic cycle all the way to the bottom. IтАЩd heard of hit ting the skids, but I never
knew before just what it meant. Once you go over that invisible edge, itтАЩs downhill all the way.
It had been almost a year since IтАЩd quit school, when Uncle Jason died. What money I had went
for the cheapest funeral the little man with the sweet, sad smile could bear to talk about. After
that, IтАЩd held a couple of jobs that had wafted away like the morning mist as soon as t he three
months тАЬtryoutтАЭ was over and the question of regular wages came up. ThereтАЩd been a few months
of scrounging, then; mowing lawns, running errands, one -day stands as a carpenterтАЩs helper or
assistant busboy while the regular man was off. IтАЩd tried to keep up appearances, enough not to
scare off any prospective employers, but the money barely stretched to cover food and what the
sign said was a clean bed. Then one day IтАЩd showed up looking just a little too thin, a little too
hungry, the collar just a little too frayed.
And now I was here, with my stomach making whimpering sounds to remind me of all the
meals it hadnтАЩt had lately, as far as ever from where I was headedтАФwherever that was. I didnтАЩt
really have a destination. I just wanted to be where I wasnтАЩt.
And I couldnтАЩt stay here. The wall was worse than no protection at all, and the wind was
blowing colder and wetter all the time. I crawled out and made it back up the slope to the road.
There were no headlights in sight; it wouldnтАЩt have helped if there were. Nobody was going to stop
in a sleetstorm in the middle of nowhere to give a lift to a hobo like me. I didnтАЩt have any little sign
to hold up, stating that I was a hardship case, that comfortable middle -class conformity was my
true vocation, that I was an honest young fellow with a year of college whoтАЩd had a little hard luck
lately; all I had were the clothes I stood in, a bad cough, and a deep conviction that if I didnтАЩt get
out of the weather, fast, by morning IтАЩd be one of those dead-of-exposure cases theyтАЩre always
finding in alleys back of cut-rate liquor stores.
I put my back to the wind and started off, hobbling on a couple of legs that ended somewhere
below the knee. I didnтАЩt notice feeling tired anymore, or hungry; I was just a machine somebody
had left running. All I could do was keep putting one foot in front of the other until I ran down.


2
I saw the light when I came up over a rise, just a weak little spark, glowing a long way off in the
big dark beyond the trees. I turned and s tarted off across the open field toward it.
Ten minutes later, I came up behind a big swaybacked barn with a new -looking silo beside it
and a rambling two story house beyond. The light was shining from a ground-floor window. There
was a pickup parked in th e side yard near the barn, and a late-model Cadillac convertible, with the
top down. Just looking at it made me ten degrees colder. I didnтАЩt have any idea of knocking on the
door, introducing myself: тАЬBilly Danger, sir. May I step inside and curl up in front of the fire?тАЭтАФ
and being invited to belly up to a chicken dinner. But there was the barn; and where there were
barns, there was hay; and where there was hay, a man could snuggle down and sleep, if not warm,
at least not out in the freezing rain. It was w orth a try.
The barn door looked easy enough: just warped boards hanging on big rusted-out hinges; but
when I tried it, nothing budged. I looked closer, and saw that the hinges werenтАЩt rotted after all;
they were just made to look that way. I picked at a flake of paint on the door; there was bright