"Grant Naylor - Red Dwarf" - читать интересную книгу автора (Naylor Grant)

asteroids.
Smoke began to plume from between Lister's legs.
Still nowhere to park.
Traffic blared and leapfrogged over him as he skewed across lanes, fighting to
keep control.
In desperation he grabbed the thermos flask lying on the passenger seat,
struggled with the unfamiliar cap, and poured the contents into his
smouldering lap.
A hiss signalled the aid of the cigarette. There was a second of delicious
relief. Then he smelted coffee. Hot coffee. Piping-hot coffee... Piping-hot
coffee that covered his loins. The pain had already hit him by the time he
poured the bottle of upholstery cleaner he found in the glove compartment over
his thighs.
The hopper, now madly out of control, caromed off the Mutual Life Assurance
building, taking a large chunk out of the neon sign before Lister wrestled it
back under control, and, still whimpering in pain, headed towards the docks.

The man in the navy-blue officer's coat and the blatantly false moustache
flagged down Lister's hopper and got in.
'A hundred-and-fifty-second and third,' he said curtly, and pressed the tash,
which was hanging down on the right-hand side, back into place.
'Going to a brothel?' asked Lister amiably.
'Absolutely not,' said the man in the blue officer's coat;
I'm an officer in the Space Corps' - he tapped the gold ban on his lapel -
'and I do not frequent brothels.'
I just thought, what with hundred-and-fifty-second and third being slap bang
in the middle of the red light area...'
'Well, you're not paid to think. You're paid to drive.'
Lister flicked on the 'Hired' sign, slipped the hopper into jump and bounced
off to the district the locals affectionately called 'Shag Town'.
On the first landing, the officer's moustache was jolted almost clear off his
face.
'What the smeg's wrong with the suspen-' his head disappeared into the soft
felting of the cab's roof '-sion...!?' He bounced back down into the seat.
'It's the roads,' Lister lied.
They stopped at a blue light. At right angles to them, thirty hoppers sprang
forward like a herd of erratic gazelles pursued by a pack of wolves.
'What's it like?'
'What's what like?' said the man, feeling his jaw, convinced a tooth had been
loosened in the last landing.
'Being in the Space Corps? Being an astro? I was sort of thinking of signing
up.'
'Were you really?' Contempt.
'D'you need any qualifications?'
'Well, not exactly. But they don*t just accept any old body, I doubt whether
you'd get in.'
Lister felt for the fare-enhancer button he'd found concealed under the
dashboard of die taxi, and added a few dollarpounds to the fare. The lights
changed and they lurched off, conversation impossible.
Lister had been trying to get off Mimas for nearly six months now. How he'd