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

And a huge, gross-bodied man with a fat baby-face and opaque black eyes.

When I saw him, I really began to get frightened.

The fat man was Natalenko, the Security Co├╢rdinator.

"Good morning, Mister Silk," Secretary Ghopal greeted me, his hand extended. "Gentlemen, Mr.
Stephen Silk, about whom we were speaking. This way, Mr. Silk, if you please."

There was a low coffee-table at the rear of the office, and four easy chairs around it. On the round brass
table-top were cups and saucers, a coffee urn, cigarettesтАФand a copy of the current issue of the
Galactic Statesmen's Journal, open at an article entitled Probable Future Courses of Solar League
Diplomacy, by somebody who had signed himself Machiavelli, Jr.

I was beginning to wish that the pseudonymous Machiavelli, Jr. had never been born, or, at least, had
stayed on Theta Virgo IV and been a wineberry planter as his father had wanted him to be.

As I sat down and accepted a cup of coffee, I avoided looking at the periodical. They were probably
going to hang it around my neck before they shoved me out of the airlock.

"Mr. Silk is, as you know, in our Consular Service," Ghopal was saying to the others. "Back on Luna on
rotation, doing something in Mr. Halvord's section. He is the gentleman who did such a splendid job for
us on AsshaтАФGamma Norma III.

"And, as he has just demonstrated," he added, gesturing toward the Statesman's Journal on the
Benares-work table, "he is a student both of the diplomacy of the past and the implications of our present
policies."

"A bit frank," Kl├╝ng commented dubiously.

"But judicious," Natalenko squeaked, in the high eunuchoid voice that came so incongruously from his
bulk. "He aired his singularly accurate predictions in a periodical that doesn't have a circulation of more
than a thousand copies outside his own department. And I don't think the public's semantic reactions to
the terminology of imperialism is as bad as you imagine. They seem quite satisfied, now, with the change
in the title of your department, from Defense to Aggression."

"Well, we've gone into that, gentlemen," Ghopal said. "If the article really makes trouble for us, we can
always disavow it. There's no censorship of the Journal. And Mr. Silk won't be around to draw fire on
us."

Here it comes, I thought.

"That sounds pretty ominous, doesn't it, Mr. Silk?" Natalenko tittered happily, like a ten-year-old who
has just found a new beetle to pull the legs out of.

"It's really not as bad as it sounds, Mr. Silk," Ghopal hastened to reassure me. "We are going to have to
banish you for a while, but I daresay that won't be so bad. The social life here on Luna has probably
begun to pall, anyhow. So we're sending you to Capella IV."