"E. E. Doc Smith - The Galaxy Primes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

'One minute, please!' Belle snapped. 'Just why, Lord Director Captain Garlock, are you insisting on oral
communication, when lepping is so much faster and better? It's stupid -reactionary. Don't you ever lep?'
"With Jim, on business, yes; with women, no more than I have to. What I think is nobody's business but mine.' What
a way to run a ship! Or a project!' 'Running this project is my business, not yours; and if there's any one thing in the
entire universe it does not need, it's a female exhibitionist. Besides your obvious qualifications to be one of the Eves
in case of Ultimate Contingency...' He broke off and stared at her, his contemptuous gaze traveling slowly,
dissectingly, from her toes to the topmost wave of her hairdo. 'Forty-two, twenty, forty?' he asked.
'You flatter me.' Her voice was controlled fury. 'Thirty-nine,
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twenty-two, thirty-nine. Five-seven. One thirty-five. If any of it's any of your business, which it isn't. You should be
discussing brains and ability, not vital statistics.'
'Brains? Well, yes - as a Prime, you must have a brain. What do you think you're good for on this project? What can
you do?'
'I can do anything any man ever born can do, and do it better!'
'Okay. Compute a Gunther field that will put us two hundred thousand feet directly above the peak of that mountain.'
That isn't fair and you know it - not that I expected fairness from you. That doesn't take either brains or ability...'
'Oh, no?'
"No. Merely highly specialized training that you know I haven't had. Give me a five-tape course on it and I'll come
closer than either you or James; for a hundred credits a shot.'
'I'll do just that. Something you are supposed to know, then. How would you go about making first contact?'
'Well, I wouldn't do it the way you would - by knocking down the first native I saw, putting my foot on his face, and
yelling, "Bow down, you stupid beasts, and worship meтАФ" '
'Hold it, both of you!' James broke in 'What the hell are you trying to prove? How about cutting out this cat-and-dog
act and getting some work done?'
'You've got a point there,' Garlock admitted, holding his temper by a visible effort. 'Sorry, Jim. Belle, what were you
briefed for?'
'To understudy you.' She, too, fought her temper down, To learn everything about Project Gunther. I have a whole
box of tapes in my room, including advanced Gunther math and first-contact techniques. I'm to study them during all
my on-watch time unless you assign other duties.'
'No matter what your duties may be, you'll have to have time to study. If you don't find what you want in your own
tapes -and you probably won't, since Ferber and his Miss Foster ran the selections - use our library. It's good -
designed to carry on our civilization. Miss Montandon? No, that's ridiculous, the way we're fixed. Lola?'
'I'm to learn how to be Doctor James'...'
'Jim please, Lola,' James said. 'And call him Clee.' 14
'I'd like that.' She smiled winningly. 'And my friends call me "Brownie".'
'I see why they would. It fits like a coat of lacquer.' It did. Her hair was a dark, lustrous brown, as were her eyebrows.
Her eyes were brown. Her skin, too - her dark red playsuit left little to the imagination - was a rich and even brown.
Originally fairly dark, it had been tanned to a more-than-fashionable depth of color by naked sunbathing and by
practically-naked outdoor sports. A couple of inches shorter than the green-haired girl, she too had a figure that
would have delighted any sculptor.
'I'm your friend, Brownie, and very glad to be such,' James said. 'Go ahead.'
'I'm to be your assistant. I have about a thousand tapes to study, too. It'll be quite awhile, I'm afraid, before I can be
of much use, but I'll do the best I can.'
'If we had hit Alpha Centauri that arrangement would have been good, but as we are, it isn't.' Garlock frowned in
thought, his heavy black eyebrows almost meeting above his finely-chiseled, acquiline nose. 'Since neither Jim nor I
need an assistant any more than we need tails, it was designed to give you girls something to do. But out here, lost,
there's work for a dozen trained specialists and there are only four of us. So we shouldn't duplicate effort. Right? You
first, Belle.'
'Are you asking me or telling me?' she asked. 'And that's a fair question; don't read anything into it that isn't there.
With your attitude, I want information.'