"H. Beam Piper - Lone Star Planet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

The author of Probable Future Courses of Solar League Diplomacy had recommended the use of
provocation to justify conquest. If the New Texans murdered two Solar League Ambassadors in a row,
nobody would blame the League for moving in with a space-fleet and an army....

I was beginning to understand how Doctor Guillotin must have felt while his neck was being shoved into
his own invention.

I looked again at the notebooks, each marked in red: Familiarize yourself with contents and burn or
disintegrate.

I'd have to do that, of course. There were a few non-humans and a lot of non-League people aboard this
ship. I couldn't let any of them find out what we considered a full briefing for a new Ambassador.

So I wrapped them in the original package and went down to the lower passenger zone, where I found
the ship's third officer. I told him that I had some secret diplomatic matter to be destroyed and he took
me to the engine room. I shoved the package into one of the mass-energy convertors and watched it
resolve itself into its constituent protons, neutrons and electrons.

On the way back, I stopped in at the ship's bar.

Hoddy Ringo was there, wrapped up inтАФand I use the words literallyтАФa young lady from the
Alderbaran system. She was on her way home from one of the quickie divorce courts on Terra and was
celebrating her marital emancipation. They were so entangled with each other that they didn't notice me.
When they left the bar, I slipped after them until I saw them enter the lady's stateroom. That, of course,
would have Hoddy immobilizedтАФbetter word, locatedтАФfor a while. So I went back to our suite, picked
the lock of Hoddy's room, and allowed myself half an hour to search his luggage.

All of his clothes were new, but there were not a great many of them. Evidently he was planning to
re-outfit himself on New Texas. There were a few odds and ends, the kind any man with a real home
planet will hold on to, in the luggage.

He had another eleven-mm pistol, made by Consolidated-Martian Metalworks, mate to the one he was
carrying in a shoulder-holster, and a wide two-holster belt like the one furnished me, but quite old.

I greeted the sight and the meaning of the old holsters with joy: they weren't the State Department Special
Services type. That meant that Hoddy was just one of Natalenko's run-of-the-gallows cutthroats, not
important enough to be issued the secret equipment.
But I was a little worried over what I found hidden in the lining of one of his bags, a letter addressed to
Space-Commander Lucius C. Stonehenge, Aggression Department Attach├й, New Austin Embassy. I
didn't have either the time or the equipment to open it. But, knowing our various Departments, I tried to
reassure myself with the thought that it was only a letter-of-credence, with the real message to be
delivered orally.

About the real message I had no doubts: arrange the murder of Ambassador Stephen Silk in such a
way that it looks like another New Texan job....