"H. Beam Piper - The Cosmic Computer (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

then everybody was waving. The gangway-port opened, and the
Academy band struck up, enthusiastically if inexpertly, as he
descended to the dock.

His father was wearing a black suit with a long coat, cut in the
same pattern as the one he had worn six years ago. Blackout
curtain cloth. It was fairly new, but the coat had begun to
acquire a permanent wrinkle across the right hip, over the
pistol butt. His mother's dress was new, and so was Flora's,
made for the occasion. He couldn't be sure just which of the
Federation Armed

7

Forces had provided the material, but his father's shirt was Med
Service sterilon.

Ashamed to be noticing things like that, he clasped his father's
hand, kissed his mother, embraced his sister. There were a few,
but very few, gray threads in his father's mustache; a few more


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squintwrinkles around the eyes. His mother's hair was all gray,
now, and she was heavier. She seemed shorter, but that would be
because he'd grown a few inches in the last six years. For a
moment, he was surprised that Flora actually looked younger.
Then he realized that to seventeen, twenty-three is practically
middle age, but to twenty-three, twenty-nine is almost
contemporary. He noticed the glint on her left hand and caught
it to look at the ring.

"Hey! Zarathustra sunstone! Nice," he said. "Where is he, Sis?"

He'd never met her fiance; Wade Lucas hadn't come to Litchfield
to practice medicine until the year after he'd gone to Terra.

"Oh, emergency," Flora said. "Obstetrical case; that won't wait
on anything. In Tramptown, of course. But he'll be at the party
. . . Oops, I shouldn't have said that; that's supposed to be a
surprise."

"Don't worry; I'll be surprised," he promised.

Then Kurt Fawzi was pushing forward, holding out his hand.
Thinner, and grayer, but just as effusive as ever.

"Welcome home, Conn. Judge, shake hands with him and tell him