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

with the captain. She was only recently off her planet, whose people were not
spacefarers until a Galactic ship stumbled upon their world, and a "new race"
was "discovered." Already she had experienced travel on four spaceships, rape,
a pirate attack, personal killing-which was even more a thrill for the HRal
than for Galactics-a hand-to-hand fight in freefall, the hours-long stressful
agony of a duel in space with spaceship Firedancer of Captain Corundum, and
Jonuta's lovemaking. All in all, she preferred the last two, in reverse
order. "Of course I shall go down onto this planet you demean so," she had
said, in the perfect diction her people brought to Erts, the language of the
Galactics. She wore a loose smock-like garment in burnt orange spattered with
diamond-shaped outlines the color of old wine, and trousers of that fine old
wine hue. "I want to see everything!" "Even Bleak?" Shig had demanded,
incredulously. "Even Bleak," HReenee had assured the smallish man with the
shining jet hair. "You'd see as much of interest and get just as big a thrill
spending ten hours in the sitter," Sak assured her. He used the spacefarers'
current dodge-word for that facility variously called the head, the can, the
John, the crap- 25 per, the pissoir, the yahya, the bathroom, and more
coyly, the rest room or powder room. The lean, seemingly boneless HReenee had
laughed at that picturesque-warning, and she had gone down onplanet with
Jonuta. There was doubtless some truth in Kenowa's unspoken thought that the
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sensuous HRal just wanted to be wherever Jonuta was. She and the others never
left Bleak's small spacecraft doeking-and-loading station in space. At that,
Kenowa and Dem returned pretty quickly to the ship. It hung in space,
eiectromagnetically docked to Bleakerstation. Its outer airlock was joined and
sealed to the station's exterior and connected with its interior, the rim of
the wheel, by Bleakerstation's scalable umbilical tunnel. Coronet's inner
airlock hatch remained closed. On Bleak or its station, even security
personnel were suspect. Shig and Sak spent most of their time in the station's
smallish bar. Since Bleakerstation had little traffic-as little as possible,
by spacefarers' choice, but at that it received more visitors than the planet
below-the bar grandiosely named the Golden Citadel was never full. On the
other hand, there were lots of other spacefarers, when Sak and Shig entered.
That was eminently understandable. Who in its right mind wanted to go down
onto Bleak? They indulged in a wee bit of the relaxer and head-changer called
repsonal and quite a bit of beer. They waited until they had a damned good
buzz on before they decided it was time to pop a red, too. Even then each man
dropped the antintoxicant pill-citromine, or "a red"- directly into the
Bleaker beaker of beer currently in use. They didn't get laid or even try to.
Booda only knew what you might pick up from a Bleaker! They merely sat
quietly, elbows on the table, drinking and cracking jokes about Bleak,
Bleakerstation, the Golden Citadel, and Bleakers. Until their waiter, a human
(more 26 or less, anyhow; he was a Bleaker) objected and expressed offense
taken. Sak snapped something unkind, urging an impossible act, and the
incredibly rude waiter "accidentally" poured beer in his lap and Shig got up
and knocked the Bleaker down. Then a chair overturned across the smallish room
and here came a spacefarer in a hurry and looking mean. He wore the