"Scott Westerfield - Unsportzmanlike Conduct" - читать интересную книгу автора (Westerfeld Scott)

the order, but rank hath its privileges.
I looked at the angle of the reddish sun. Plenty of afternoon left. We were taking off an
extra half-day in honor of our new bat, and to celebrate our latest pipeline milestone, which
we'd reached ahead of schedule. Probably a longer game would tire everyone out for a goo
night's sleep. Morale needed a boost, I figured.
"Let's go for nine," I called.
 Alex gave me a questioning look.
I nodded. "That's right. Cancel the late shift. It's a beer night."
"You got it, Colonel." She stepped into the batter's box. "Doctor?"
Dr. Chirac completed a sweep with her tablet, with which she'd been snapping picture
our alien audience, and nodded curtly. "Play ball."
I took a deep breath, slapping our best baseball into the worn pocket of my glove. The
ritual begun, I cracked my neck on both sides with a dip of each shoulder, squinted at Yosh
first and McGill at third, tugged aside my filter mask and spat, then licked my lips once from
right to left.
Wound up.
And threw. A bit low and to the left.
"Ball one!" Dr. Chirac shouted in her familiar way, loud enough to carry to the alien
observers. The xenos weren't quite sure of the Taus' hearing range yet, but Chirac called the
game at high volume, introducing minimal variation in baseball's signs and signifiers. The m
consistent she was, the easier it would be for the Tau to learn the patterns of the game. She
stepped back, folding her arms to gaze at the audience as she did between each pitch.
Hunter returned the ball to me. I cracked my neck again, checked the bases, and licked
lips. He gave me two fingers down, to which I nodded. Alex couldn't stand up to my fastba
I wound up, pitched it in hard. Swing and a crack, straight up or just about. I ran a few
steps forward, but Hunter sprang up and waved me off, taking the catch.
The humans in the field raised a ragged cheer, echoed by the high-pitched hooting of th
Taus.
"How'd she feel?" I yelled to Alex as she trudged back from halfway to first base.
She laughed. "What, are baseball bats feminine now?"
"That one is."
Alex picked it up from where it had flown from her grasp and ran her fingers down its
length. "Maybe you're right. She's pretty sweet."
"Don't ask, don't tell, Captain." I smiled, mentally moving myself to the top of my team
order, and returned to the mound.



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The game went long, and our shadows lengthened, then doubled as Antipodes rose, full as i
was every weekend. Like most small-town baseball games, ours was a dramatic affair, the
score padded by overthrows, dropped catches, and stolen bases. By the bottom of the ninth,
teams were tied at twelve runs apiece.
"Come on guys, extra innings," Alex shouted as her team took the field.
"No way. Let's wrap this up," I exhorted my own troops.
The Taus seemed to have caught the growing tension. They'd been agitated since the en
the seventh. I wondered if they'd noticed we were playing a couple of more innings than us
No one knew how smart the Taus were. They were definitely tool-users well into the
agricultural revolution, planting their ferny staple plants with stick hoes and fending off larg
predators collectively, using spears and slings and a lot of hooting. According to some of o