"William Tenn - Down Among the Dead Men" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tenn William)

"A nucleonic howitzer. The way it was figured later, it had been a defective shell. Bad enough to kill
half the men on our second-class cruiser. I wasn't killed, but I was in range of the back-blast."
"That back-blast," Lamehd was figuring it out quickly in his mind. "That back-blast will sterilize
anybody for two hundred feet. Unless you're wearingтАФ"
 "And I wasn't." I had stopped sweating. It was over. My crazy little precious secret was out. I took
a deep breath. "So you seeтАФwell, anyway, I know they haven't solved that problem yet."
Roger Grey stood up and said, "Hey." He held out his hand. I shook it. It felt like any normal guy's
hand. Stronger maybe.
"Sling-shot personnel," I went on, "are all volunteers. Except for two categories: the commanders
and soldier surrogates."
"Figuring, I guess," Weinstein asked, "that the human race can spare them most easily?"
"Right," I said. "Figuring that the human race can spare them most easily." He nodded.
"Well, I'll be damned," Yussuf Lamehd laughed as he got up and shook my hand, too. "Welcome to
our city."
"Thanks," I said. "Son."
He seemed puzzled at the emphasis.
"That's the rest of it," I explained. "Never got married and was too busy getting drunk and tearing up
the pavement on my leaves to visit a sperm bank."
"Oho," Weinstein said, and gestured at the walls with a thick thumb. "So this is it."
"That's right: this is it. The Family. The only one I'll ever have. I've got almost enough of theseтАФ" I
tapped my medals "тАФto rate replacement. As a sling-shot com-mander, I'm sure of it."
"All you don't know yet," Lamehd pointed out, "is how high a percentage of re-placement will be
apportioned to your memory. That depends on how many more of these chest decorations you collect
before you become anтАФah, should I say raw material?"
"Yeah," I said, feeling crazily light and easy and relaxed. I'd got it all out and I didn't feel whipped
any more by a billion years of reproduction and evolution. And I'd been going to do a morale job on
them! "Say raw material, Lamehd."
"Well, boys," he went on, "it seems to me we want the commander to get a lot more fruit salad. He's
a nice guy and there should be more of him in the club."
They were all standing around me now, Weinstein, Lamehd, Grey, Wang Hsi. They looked real
friendly and real capable. I began to feel we were going to have one of the best sling-shots inтАФWhat did
I mean one of the best? The best, mister, the best.
"Okay," said Grey. "Wherever and whenever you want to, you start leading usтАФPop."


Afterword


There's not much I have to say about "Down Among the Dead Men." Horace L. Gold said he needed a
novelette almost immediately for Galaxy, and most of all he wanted a space opera.
"You've never written a space opera, a real bangety-bang space opera," he said. "Why not?"
"I don't like them," I told him. "I don't like to read them, and I don't like to write them.
Science-fiction westerns: they're kill-'em-on-Mercury-instead-of-Montana."
Well, he explained, ifтАФin spite of my bullshit fastidiousnessтАФI managed to write one in the next
week, he would give me a large bonus on the word rate and voucher the check through immediately.
As always, in those days, I could very much use the money; so I agreed to think about it. To my
surprise, by the time I got home, I had an idea. I began writing.
It went fast. I completed the piece in a weekend.
Horace loved it, bought it. "It's a real space opera," he marveled, "but all the important action takes
place completely offstage. A tour deforce!"