"Andrew J. Offutt - Spaceways 09 - In Quest of Qalara" - читать интересную книгу автора (Offutt Andrew J)

Meanwhile it had baffled Franjistation's scanners and heat-sensors. Each of
the other six crates gave off a heat-reading that varied by no more than one
degree Celsius from each other, including the fifth crate. No one had thought
to scan the dangling ends of the finger-thick tubes of yellow duraplas. Why
bother? The Terasak spacefarer began stripping off his baggy green
two-piece. The spacesuit sat up, stood. Its owner began removing it. The
Terasak saw an astonishingly homely woman with old-gold skin, in a blue
skintite that molded her angular leanness from neck to toes. The spacefarer
said nothing, but he did turn away. This was his first view of the person they
had smuggled onto Franji, and he could live quite well without seeing
another. What even he didn't know was that the spacesuit's wearer was a
decent-looking if not quite handsome man with deep tan skin. A not at all
angular man, though he was rangily well-muscled. He wore a pair of tights in
a 18 drab gray. And nothing else, except the holographic projector that made
him seem to be an astonishingly homely woman of Terasak coloration, with an
angularly lean body snugly encased in medium blue. The holoproj that cloaked
him with that false aura was so advanced that even Kislar Jonuta was unaware
of its existence. Neither man spoke a single word. Talk was not part of the
drill, but there was a time limit. Shuttle pods were too important to be
allowed to sit around unloaded. Too bad Franji couldn't make its own sonic
insect repellors, but once a growing conglomerate got hold of one of the only
two companies, the unions really did a job on the conglomerate and despite two
government bail-outs, Franji's SoundKil Co. had collapsed. The real Terasak
got into the spacesuit. It fitted him, naturally, because that was the way the
operation had been planned. The other man donned the green two-piece and
stuffed the pants into the green boots so that the full legs Moused
baggily. The newly spacesuited man got down and got himself into the
thermo-retentive bag, the other man helping. He zipped the bag to within two
sems of its closure, where the little airtight lid would clamp it. "You all
right?" "Pos," the silver-bagged man said, very grateful for the human contact
and the concern but hardly charmed by the other's unfeminine voice. Maybe she
could earn enough on this mission to get her face and voice fixed, he thought,
and was zipped in. The bag's former occupant detached the sealant spray from
where it had been attached, to the inside end of the crate. He gave the
zip-lock two puffs and set the little sprayer down beside him, on the
shuttle-pod's padded floor. He patted a little sticker into place on the
silver bag. All with careful swiftness. Everything so far had
been 19 practiced, rehearsed again and again. (Not on Terasaki, where Hot
Squid had not come from. As a matter of fact the ship's name was not Hot
Squid, either.) The man in the loose greens re-closed the crate, and tested
it. He nodded his satisfaction. There had been this sealed crate and a man in
a green suit, beardless and jet-haired. There still was. The only added factor
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was the spray-can of sealant. The spacer crewman's breather still lay on the
floor where he had dropped it. The holoprojector was off. The man in the loose
greens paused to listen. Good. Here came the unloaders, and their
machinery. Squatting, he picked up the sprayer and the end of the yellow tube