"H. Beam Piper - Four- Day Planet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

Like the audiovisuals, it not only transmitted in to the Times, but made a
recording as insurance against transmission failure. I reached into a slit on
the side and snapped on the switch while I was fumbling with a pencil and
notebook with the other hand, and started by asking him what had decided
him to do a book about Fenris.
After that, I fed a question every now and then to keep him running,
and only listened to every third word. The radio was doing a better job than
I possibly could have. At the same time, I was watching Steve Ravick,
Morton Hallstock and Leo Belsher at one side of the room, and Bish Ware at
the other. Bish was within ear-straining range. Out of the corner of my eye,
I saw another man, younger in appearance and looking like an Army officer
in civvies, approach him.
тАЬMy dear Bishop!тАЭ this man said in greeting.
As far as I knew, that nickname had originated on Fenris. I made a
mental note of that.
тАЬHow are you?тАЭ Bish replied, grasping the other's hand. тАЬYou have been
in Afghanistan, I perceive.тАЭ
That did it. I told you I was an old Sherlock Holmes reader; I recognized
that line. This meeting was prearranged, neither of them had ever met
before, and they needed a recognition code. Then I returned to Murell, and
decided to wonder about Bish Ware and тАЬDr. WatsonтАЭ later.
It wasn't long before I was noticing a few odd things about Murell, too,
which confirmed my original suspicions of him. He didn't have the firm name
of his alleged publishers right, he didn't know what a literary agent was
and, after claiming to have been a newsman, he consistently used the
expression тАЬnews service.тАЭ I know, everybody says thatтАФeverybody but
newsmen. They always call a news service a тАЬpaper,тАЭ especially when
talking to other newsmen.
Of course, there isn't any paper connected with it, except the pad the
editor doodles on. What gets to the public is photoprint, out of a
teleprinter. As small as our circulation is, we have four or five hundred of
them in Port Sandor and around among the small settlements in the
archipelago, and even on the mainland. Most of them are in bars and cafes
and cigar stores and places like that, operated by a coin in a slot and
leased by the proprietor, and some of the big hunter-ships like Joe
Kivelson's Javelin and Nip Spazoni's Bulldog have them.
But long ago, back in the First Centuries, Pre-Atomic and Atomic Era,
they were actually printed on paper, and the copies distributed and sold.
They used printing presses as heavy as a spaceship's engines. That's why
we still call ourselves the Press. Some of the old papers on Terra, like La
Prensa in Buenos Aires, and the Melbourne Times, which used to be the
London Times when there was still a London, were printed that way
originally.
Finally I got through with my interview, and then shot about fifteen
minutes of audiovisual, which would be cut to five for the 'cast. By this
time Bish and тАЬDr. WatsonтАЭ had disappeared, I supposed to the ship's bar,
and Ravick and his accomplices had gotten through with their conspiracy to
defraud the hunters. I turned Murell over to Tom, and went over to where
they were standing together. I'd put away my pencil and pad long ago with
Murell; now I got them out ostentatiously as I approached.