"E. E. Doc Smith - Skylark 4 - Skylark Duquesne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

 SKYLARK DUQUESNE
By Edward E. Smith, Ph.D.
Copyright 1965 by Galaxy Publication Corporation


1. s.o.s.

APPEARANCES are deceiving. A polished chunk of metal that shines like a Christmas-
tree ornament may hold-and release-energy to destroy a city. A seed is quite another
order of being to the murderous majesty of a toppling tree. A match flame can become a
holocaust.

And the chain of events that can unseat the rulers of galaxies can begin in a cozy living
room, before a hearth ....

Outwardly, the comfortable (if somewhat splendidly furnished) living room of the home of
the Richard Ballinger Seatons of Earth presented a peaceful scene. Peaceful? It was
sheerly pastoral! Seaton and Dorothy, his spectacularly auburn-haired wife, sat on a
davenport, holding hands. A fire of pine logs burned slowly, crackling occasionally and
sending sparks against the fine bronze screen of the fireplace. Richard Ballinger Seaton
Junior lay on the rug, trying doggedly, silently, and manfully, if unsuccessfully, to wriggle
toward those entrancing flames.

Inwardly, however, it was very much otherwise. Dorothy's normally pleasant-as well as
beautiful-face wore a veritable scowl.

The dinner they had just eaten had been over two hours late; wherefore not one single
item of it had been fit to feed to a pig. Furthermore, and worse, Dick was not relaxed
and was not paying any attention to her at all. He was still wound up tight; was still
concentrating on the multitude of messages driving into his brain through the button in his
left ear-messages of such urgency of drive that she herself could actually read them,
even though she was wearing no apparatus whatever.

She reached up, twitched the button out of his ear, and tossed it onto a table. "Will you
please lay off of that stuff for a minute, Dick?" she demanded. "I'm fed up to the eyeballs
with this business of you killing yourself with all time work and no time sleep. You never
had any such horrible black circles under your eyes before and you're getting positively
scrawny. You've got to quit it: Can't you let somebody else carry some of the load?
Delegate some authority?"

"I'm delegating all I possibly can already, Red-Top." Seaton absently rubbed his ear.


-1-
Until Dorothy had flipped it away, the button had been carrying to him a transcription of
the taped reports of more than one hundred Planetary Observers from the planet of
Norlamin, each with the IQ of an Einstein and the sagacity of an owl. The last report had
had to do with plentiful supplies of X metal that had been turned up on a planet of
Omicron Eridani, and the decision to dispatch a fleet of cargo-carrying ships to fetch
them away.