"Keith Laumer - The Lighter Side" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

There was the sound of a motor. The headlight of a second motorcycle was approaching. As it
shot past, he saw the shape behind the handlebars: a headless torso, bulbous, ornamented with
two clusters of tentacles. Through the single goggle, an eye as big as a pizza swiveled to impale
him with a glance of utter alienness.
With a strangled yell, Roger leaped back and saw the motorcycle veer wildly, hurling its
monstrous rider clear, then skid to a stop in the center of the highway. Roger could see that the
rider's upper portion was smashed into a pulp.
"I should go to the police," he said. "But what can I say? That I was responsible for the death
of a giant rutabaga?"
"Time is of the essence," the girl's slightly accented voice said. "Get going! Take the
motorcycle!"
"That would be stealing!"
"Who's going to report it? Relatives of a giant rutabaga?"
"You have a definite point there," Roger said . . .
-from Time Trap
BAEN BOOKS by Keith Laumer:
The Compleat Bolo
Retief!
Odyssey
Keith Laumer: The Lighter Side
 IN THE QUEUE
The old man fell just as Farn Hestler's power wheel was passing his Place in Line, on his way
back from the Comfort Station. Hestler, braking, stared down at the twisted face, a mask of soft,
pale leather in which the mouth writhed as if trying to tear itself free of the dying body. Then he
jumped from the wheel, bent over the victim. Quick as he was, a lean woman with fingers like
gnarled roots was before him, clutching at the old man's fleshless shoulders.
"Tell them me, Millicent Dredgewicke Klunt," she was shrilling into the vacant face. "Oh, if
you only knew what I've been through, how I deserve the help-"
Hestler sent her reeling with a deft shove of his foot. He knelt beside the old man, lifted his
head.
"Vultures," he said. "Greedy, snapping at a man. Now, I care. And you were getting so close
to the Head of the Line. The tales you could tell, I'll bet. An Old-timer. Not like these Line, er,
jumpers," he diverted the obscenity. "I say a man deserves a little dignity at a moment like this-"
"Wasting your time, Jack," a meaty voice said. Hestler glanced up into the hippopotamine
features of the man he always thought of as Twentieth Back. "The old coot's dead."
Hestler shook the corpse. "Tell them Argall Y. Hestler!" he yelled into the dead ear. "Argall,
that's A-R-G-A-L-L-"
"Break it up," the brassy voice of a Line Policeman sliced through the babble. "You, get
back." A sharp prod lent urgency to the command. Hestler rose reluctantly, his eyes on the waxy
face slackening into an expression of horrified astonishment.
"Ghoul," the lean woman he had kicked snarled. "Line-!" She mouthed the unmentionable
word.
"I wasn't thinking of myself," Hestler countered hotly. "But my boy Argall, through no fault
of his own-"
"All right, quiet!" the cop snarled. He jerked a thumb at the dead man. "This guy make any
disposition?"
"Yes!" the lean woman cried. "He said, to Millicent Dredgewicke Klunt, that's M-I-L-"
"She's lying," Hestler cut in. "I happened to catch the name Argall Hestler-right, sir?" He
looked brightly at a slack-jawed lad who was staring down at the corpse.
The boy swallowed and looked Hestler in the face.