"Murray Leinster - The Duplicators" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

THE DUPLICATORS
Copyright ┬й, 1964, by Murray Leinster All Rights Reserved
NO TRUCE WITH TEHBA
Copyright ┬й, 1964, by Ace Books, Inc. Printed in U.S.A.

IT OCCURRED to Link Denham, as a matter for mild regret, that he was about to wake up, and he'd had much too
satisfactory a pre-slumber evening to want to do so. He lay between sleeping and awake, and he felt a splendid peace-
fulness, and the festive events in which he'd relaxed after six months on Glaeth ran pleasantly through his mind. He didn't
want to think about Glaeth any more. He'd ventured forth for a large evening because he wanted to forget that man-killing
world. Now, not fully asleep and very far from wide-awake, snatches of charming memory floated through his
consciousness. There had been song, this past evening.
There had been conversation, man-talk upon matters of great interest and no importance whatever. And things had gone on
to a remarkably enjoyable climax.
He did not stir, but he remembered that one of his new-found intimate friends had been threatened with ejection from the
place where Link and others relaxed. There were protests, in which Link joined. Then there was conflict, in which he took
part. The intended ejectee was rescued before he was heaved into the darkness outside this particular spaceport joint. There
was celebration of his rescue. Then the spaceport cops arrived, which was an insult to all the warm friends who now
considered that they had been celebrating together.
Link drowsily and pleasurably recalled the uproar. There were many pleasing items it was delightful to review.
Somebody'd defied fate and chance and spaceport cops from a pyramid of piled-up chairs and tables. Link himself, with
many loyal comrades, had charged the cops who tried to pull him down. He recalled bottles spinning in the air, spouting
their contents as they flew. Spaceport cops turned fire hoses on Link's new friends, and they and he heaved chairs at
spaceport cops. Some friends fought cordially on the floor and others zestfully at other places, and all the tensions and all
the tautness of nerves developed on GlaethтАФwhere the death rate was ten per cent a month among carynth-huntersтАФwere
relieved and smoothed out and totally erased. So Link now felt completely peaceful and beatifically content.
Somewhere, something mechanical clicked loudly. Something else made a subdued grunting noise which was also
mechanical. These sounds were reality, intruding upon the blissful tranquility Link now enjoyed.
He remembered something. His eyes did not open, but his hand fumbled at his waist. He was reassured. His stake-belt was
still there, and it still contained the gritty small objects for which he'd risked his life several times a day for some
months in succession. Those pinkish crystals were at once the reason and the reward for his journey to Glaeth. He'd been
lucky. But he'd become intolerably tense. He'd been unable to relax when the buy-boat picked him up with other carynth-
hunters, and he hadn't been able to loosen up his nerves at the planet to which the buy-boat took him. But here, on this
remoter planet, Trent, he had relaxed at last. He was soothed. He was prepared to face reality with a cheerful confidence.
Remembering, he had become nearly awake. It occurred to him that the laws of the planet Trent were said to be severe.
The cops were stern. It was highly probable that when he opened his eyes he would find himself in jail, with fines to be
paid and a magistrate's lecture on proper behavior to be listened to. But he recalled unworriedly that he could pay his fines,
and that he was ready to behave like an angel, now that he'd relaxed.
The loud clicking sound repeated. It was followed again by the grunting noise. Link opened his eyes.
Something that looked like a Wall turned slowly around some six feet away from him. A moment later he found himself
regarding a corner where three walls came together. He hadn't moved his head. The wall moved. Again, later, a square and
more or less flat object with a billowing red cloth on it floated into view. He deduced that it was a table.
He was not standing on his feet, however. He was not lying on a bunk. He floated, weightless, in mid-air in a cubicle
perhaps ten feet by fifteen and seven feet high. The thing with the red cloth on it was truly a table, fastened to what ought
to be a floor. There were chairs. There was a doorway with steps leading nowhere.
Link closed his eyes and counted ten, but the look of things remained the same when he reopened them. Before his
relaxation of the night before, such a waking would have dis-
turbed him. Now he contemplated his surroundings with calm. He was evidently not in jail. As evidently, he was not
aground anywhere. The only possible explanation was unlikely to the point of insanity, but it had to be true. He was in a
spaceship, and not a luxurious one. This particular compartment was definitely shabby. And on the evidence of no-gravity,
the ship was in free fall. It was not exactly a normal state of things to wake up to.