"C. L. Moore - Shambleau" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)

here in a day or two and I can't take you along, you know. Where'd you come from in the first
place?"
Again she shook her head.
"Not telling? Well, it's your own business. You can stay here until I give up the room. From
then on you'll have to do your own worrying."
He swung his feet to the floor and reached for his clothes.
Ten minutes later, slipping the heat-gun into its holster at his thigh,. Smith turned to the
girl. "There's food-concen-trate in that box on the table. It ought to hold you until I get
back. And you'd better lock the door again after I've gone."

Her wide, unwavering stare was his only answer, and he was not sure she had understood, but at any
rate the lock clicked after him as before, and he went down the steps with a faint grin on his
lips.
The memory of last night's extraordinary dream was slipping from him, as such memories do, andby
the time he had reached the street the girl and the dream and all of yesterday's happenings were
blotted out by the sharp neces-sities of the present.
Again the intricate business that had brought him here claimed his attention. He went about it to
the exclusion of all else, and there was a good reason behind everything he did from the moment he
stepped out into the street until the time when he turned back again at evening; though had one
chosen to follow him during the day his apparently aimless rambling through Lakkdarol would have
seemed very point-less.



He must have spent two hours at the least idling by the space-port, watching with sleepy,
colorless eyes the ships that came and went, the passengers, the vessels lying at wait, the
cargoes-particularly the cargoes. He made the rounds of the town's saloons once more, consuming
many glasses of varied liquors in the' course of the day and engag-ing in idle conversation with
men of all races and worlds, usually in their own languages, for Smith was a linguist of repute
among his contemporaries, He heard the gossip of the spaceways, neas from a dozen planets of a
thousand dif-ferent events. He heard the latest joke about the Venusian Emperor and the latest
report on the Chino-Aryan war and the latest song hot from the lips of Rose Robertson, whom every
man on the civilized planets adored as,"the Georgia Rose." He passed the day quite profitably, for
his own pur-poses, which do not concern us now, and it was not until late evening, when he turned
homeward again, that the thought of the brown girl in his room took definite shape in his mind,
though it had been lurking there, formless and sub-merged, all day.

He had no idea what comprised her usual diet, but be bought a can of New York roast beef and one
of Venusian frog-broth and a dozen fresh canal-apples and two pounds of that Earth lettuce that
grows so vigorously in the fertile canal-soil of Mars. He felt that she must surely find some-
thing to her liking in this broad variety of edibles, and-for his day bad been very satisfactory-
he hummed The Green Hills of Earth to himself in a surprisingly good bari. tone as he climbed the
stairs



.

The door was locked, as before, and he was reduced to kicking the lower panels gently with his
boot, for his arms were full. She opened the door with that softness that was characteristic of