"Mack Reynolds - Code Duello" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Mack)

"Very well. I will wager you a hundred interplanetary credits that if I
flick this coin into the air it will come down with the head on top."

Metaxa looked at him. "Very well, flick the coin. I suppose there's some
rhyme or reason to this."

Rhodes flicked the coin high. When it bounced to the floor he didn't
bother to look. He held out his hand. "You owe me one hundred credits.
Will you document it so that I may credit my account?"

Metaxa looked at Lee Chang in irritation. "Anybody could flip a coin
and win. A fifty-fifty chance. What's lucky about that?"

"That comes next," Rhodes said gently. "This time I will wager you the
same amount that I can flip it heads three times in a row."

Metaxa blinked. "You're on."

Heads. Heads. Heads.

Rhodes said, "You owe me two hundred credits. The next bet is another
hundred that I can flip it five times in a row headsтАФor tails for that
matter. You call it."

Metaxa was staring by now. "Let me see that damned coin! What bet
comes after that?"

"That I can flip it ten times in a row," Rhodes said. "I seldom manage
to cozen anybody into that. Are you game?"

"Yes, but not everybody's!" Metaxa spun back to Lee Chang and Sid
Jakes. He pointed to another of the room's occupants. "What does he do?"

Sid answered him this times. "That's George Killmer, Licensed Orbit
Computer. A ballistics specialist. He does celestial mechanics problems
like solving the equations of motion of planetary systems as an off-hand
job when somebody brings in a set of observations on some new system.
His main work is computing interstellar flight paths for commercial and
military ships, and as such he can go just about anywhere among the
settled worlds without anyone thinking of him as a possible agent."

"What's that got to do with Section G?" Metaxa asked. "What's his
so-called special talent?"

Sid said, grinning, "He's the best pickpocket Lee Chang was able to
locate by going through the files of every planet whose police cooperate
with Inter-Planet-Pol. He's probably the best pickpocket who ever lived.
Imagine. Almost three thousand planets in U.P. with socioeconomic
systems that have crime, and each with an average population of about
'two billion. And he's the best pickpocket of all."