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

you can rate them. But, even so, I liked the calm and confident man-ner with which Wang Hsi and
Weinstein sat under my examination. And I liked them.
Right there I felt a hundred pounds slide off my chest. I felt relaxed for the first time in days. I really
liked my crew, zombies or no. We'd make it.
I decided to tell them. "Men," I said, "I think we'll really get along. I think we've got the makings of a
sweet, smooth sling-shot. You'll find meтАФ"
And I stopped. That cold, slightly mocking look in their eyes. They way they had glanced at each
other when I told them I thought we'd get along, glanced at each other and blown slightly through
distended nostrils. I realized that none of them had said anything since they'd come in; they'd just been
watching me, and their eyes weren't exactly warm.
I stopped and let myself take a long, deep breath. For the first time, it was occur-ring to me that I'd
been worrying about just one end of the problem, and maybe the least important end. I'd been worrying
about how I'd react to them and how much I'd be able to accept them as shipmates. They were zombies,
after all. It had never oc-curred to me to wonder how they'd feel about me.
And there was evidently something very wrong in how they felt about me.
"What is it, men?" I asked. They all looked at me inquiringly. "What's on your minds?"
They kept looking at me. Weinstein pursed his lips and tilted his chair back and forth. It creaked.
Nobody said anything.
I got off the desk and walked up and down in front of the classroom. They kept following me with
their eyes.
 "Grey," I said. "You look as if you've got a great big knot inside you. Want to tell me about it?"
"No, Commander," he said deliberately. "I don't want to tell you about it."
I grimaced. "If anyone wants to say anythingтАФanything at allтАФit'll be off the record and completely
off the record. Also for the moment we'll forget about such matters as rank and TAF regulations." I
waited. "Wang? Lamehd? How about you, Weinstein?" They stared at me quietly. Weinstein's chair
creaked back and forth.
It had me baffled. What kind of gripe could they have against me? They'd never met me before. But
I knew one thing: I wasn't going to haul a crew nursing a sub-surface grudge as unanimous as this aboard
a sling-shot. I wasn't going to chop space with those eyes at my back. It would be more efficient for me
to shove my head against an Irvingle lens and push the button.
"Listen," I told them. "I meant what I said about forgetting rank and TAF regula-tions. I want to run
a happy ship and I have to know what's up. We'll be living, the five of us, in the tightest, most cramped
conditions the mind of man has yet been able to devise; we'll be operating a tiny ship whose only purpose
is to dodge at tremendous speed through the fire-power and screening devices of the larger enemy craft
and deliver a single, crippling blast from a single oversize Irvingle. We've got to get along whether we like
each other or not. If we don't get along, if there's any unspoken hostility get-ting in our way, the ship
won't operate at maximum efficiency. And that way, we're through before weтАФ"
"Commander," Weinstein said suddenly, his chair coming down upon the floor with a solid whack,
"I'd like to ask you a question."
"Sure," I said and let out a gust of relief that was the size of a small hurricane. "Ask me anything."
"When you think about us, Commander, or when you talk about us, which word do you use?"
I looked at him and shook my head. "Eh?"
"When you talk about us, Commander, or when you think about us, do you call us zombies? Or do
you call us blobs? That's what I'd like to know, Commander."
He'd spoken in such a polite, even tone that I was a long time in getting the full significance of it.
"Personally," said Roger Grey in a voice that was just a little less polite, a little less even, "personally,
I think the Commander is the kind who refers to us as canned meat. Right, Commander?"
Yussuf Lamehd folded his arms across his chest and seemed to consider the issue very thoughtfully.
"I think you're right, Rog. He's the canned-meat type. Definitely the canned-meat type."
"No," said Wang Hsi. "He doesn't use that kind of language. Zombies, yes; canned meat, no. You