"William Tenn - Party of the Two Parts" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tenn William)

Party of the Two Parts
William Tenn

GALACTOGRAM FROM STELLAR SERGEANT O-DIK-VEH, COMMANDER OF
OUTLYING PATROL OFFICE 1OO1625, TO HEADQUARTERS DESK SERGEANT
HOY-VEH-CHALT, GA-LACTIC PATROL HEADQUARTERS ON VEGA XXIтАФ(PLEASE
NOTE: THIS IS TO BE TRANS-MITTED AS PERSONAL, NOT OFFICIAL, MESSAGE
AND AS SUCH WILL BE CHARGED THE USUAL HYPERSPACE RATES)

My Dear Hoy:
I am deeply sorry to trouble you again, but, Hoy, am I in a jam! Once more, it's not something that I
did wrong, but something I didn't do rightтАФwhat the Old One is sure to wheeze is "a patent dereliction of
obvious duty." And since I'm positive he'll be just as confused as I, once the prisoners I'm sending on by
slow light-transport arrive (when he reads the official report that I drew up and am transmitting with them,
I can see him dropping an even dozen of his jaws), I can only hope that this advance message will give
you enough time to consult the best legal minds in Vegan Headquarters and get some sort of solution
worked out.
If there's any kind of solution available by the time he reads my report, the Old One won't be nearly
as angry at my dumping the problem on his lap. But I have an uneasy, persistent fear that Headquarters is
going to get as snarled up in this one as my own office. If it does, the Old One is likely to remember what
happened in Out-lying Patrol Office 1001625 the last timeтАФand then, Hoy, you will be short one
spore-cousin.
It's a dirty business all around, a real dirty business. I use the phrase advisedly. In the sense of
obscene, if you follow me.
As you've no doubt suspected by now, most of the trouble has to do with that damp and irritating
third planet of Sol, the one that many of its inhabitants call Earth. Those damned chittering bipeds cause
me more sleeplessness than any other species in my sector. Sufficiently advanced technologically to be
almost at Stage 15тАФself-devel-oped interplanetary travelтАФthey are still centuries away from the usually
concur-rent Stage 15AтАФfriendly contact by the galactic civilization.
They are, therefore, still in Secretly Supervised Status, which means that I have to maintain a staff of
about two hundred agents on their planet, all encased in clumsy and uncomfortable protoplasmic
disguises, to prevent them from blowing their silly selves up before the arrival of their spiritual millennium.
On top of everything, their solar system only has nine planets, which means that my permanent
headquarters office can't get any farther away from Sol than the planet they call Pluto, a world whose
winters are bearable, but whose summers are unspeak-ably hot. I tell you, Hoy, the life of a stellar
sergeant isn't all gloor and skubbets, no matter what Rear Echelon says.
In all honesty, though, I should admit that the difficulty did not originate on Sol III this time. Ever
since their unexpected and uncalled-for development of nuclear fission, which, as you know, cost me a
promotion, I've doubled the number of un-dercover operatives on the planet and given them stern
warning to report the slight-est technological spurt immediately. I doubt that these humans could invent so
much as an elementary time-machine now, without my knowing of it well in advance.
No, this time it all started on Rugh VI, the world known to those who live on it as Gtet. If you
consult your atlas, Hoy, you'll find Rugh is a fair-sized yellow dwarf star on the outskirts of the galaxy,
and Gtet an extremely insignificant planet which has only recently achieved the status of Stage
19тАФprimary interstellar citizenship.
The Gtetans are a modified amoeboid race who manufacture a fair brand of ashkebac, which they
export to their neighbors on Rugh IX and XII. They are a highly individu-alistic people and still
experience many frictions living in a centralized society. Despite several centuries of advanced civilization,
most Gtetans look upon the Law as a de-lightful problem in circumvention rather than as a way of life.
An ideal combination with my bipeds of Earth, eh?