"Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle - Fallen Angels" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

She found five more fen waiting outside by Bob's van. Three she knew
from an earlier life. She smiled and waved and they nodded warily.
beard.
Even with the last drop of alkey sucked from the car's tank, the van had
less than a full tank. Thor climbed into the van and slid the door closed. He
still had the syphon. Sherrine poked her nose out of her coat.
"Keeping the syphon?"
His grin was lopsided and too wide. Siphoning alcohol . . . He held the
rubber hose up like an Appalachian snake handler. "We can't make it to
Mapleton and back on one tank. Might not be too smart to gas up at a
public station. 'Specially after we collect Rafe and Cabe."
"Who?"
"The Angels."
"Oh. You know their names?"
"Those are code names." That was Mike Glider, grinning on her right.
"Gotta have code names on a clandestine operation."
"Sure you do; there are standards to keep up."
She shook her head. Mike knew everything there was to know and had
opinions on the rest. He'd been a county agricultural agent since quitting
the IRS; but that was just cover for his true identity as Oral Historian of
Fandom. He was "tall and round and three hundred pound," in his own
words. If they froze on the Ice, he'd freeze last.
Bob started the van and Sherrine felt that electric thrill surging deep and
strong. Real spacemen. Oh, God, to talk to them! Space stations. Moon
base. Angels down; fans to the rescue!
She looked around at her companions. "Thor, you look like a Mormon
patriarch."
"The beard's for warmth. I shave the mustache off so snot won't freeze
in it. Ever wonder why Eskimos don't grow more hair? Evolution in
action."
"Hunh. No." Fans were a wellspring of minutiae, a peculiar mix of the
trivial and the practical. Try asking about Inuit tonsorial practices in a
muscle than fat. He was stronger than he looked. His black beard was wild
and bushy, wildly unlike Thor's silken, Nordic god look. "How is Jake
these days?" he asked.
She dropped her eyes. "I wouldn't know."
Bob put in his two cents. "Jake left her for a New Cookie five years ago."
Thanks, Bob. You could hand out flyers! "Jake really did gafiate," she
explained. "I became a 'dane because I had to; but he really wanted to. He
kept making digs about 'sci-fi' and 'Buck Rogers stuff.' Trying to yank my
chain. So . . ." A shrug. "We drifted apart." And in the end they couldn't
even talk about it. The teasing turned into arguments; the arguments into
fights. Eventually she had to watch what she said around him because she
couldn't be sure that he wouldn't denounce her for fannishness to the
University. And wasn't that a hell of a basis for a marriage?
Besides, that was certainly a better explanation for why he left than the
one she saw in the mirror every morning.
"That's okay," said Bruce. "We couldn't have used him anyway."
She pulled her parka hood tighter around her face. That was like Bruce,
to evaluate everything, even her personal life, in terms of its utility to the