"Donald Westlake - SH1 - Don't You Know There's A War On" - читать интересную книгу автора (Westlake Donald E)

are peaceful scholars."

"I thought I might shoot some birds," said the captain. "For stuffing." Bird taxidermy was the only thing in
life the captain really cared about. Seven generations of Standforths had, unfortunately, made such
magnificent careers in the Galactic Patrol that this Standforth had had no choice but to sign up when he'd
attained the proper age, but the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake, which everybody now knew -
and which was why he had been assigned to the Hopeful.

"Shoot birds later," Luthguster said, somewhat stiffly. "Let us begin peacably. Open the door, Billy."

Billy pushed the button, the door opened and Luthguster stepped out onto the platform at the head of the
ladder. 'Fellow thinkers," he cried out and fell back into the ship with seven arrows stuck in him.



"Rotten aim," Chief Engineer Hester Hanshaw said, wiping her hands on a greasy rag, then dropping it
onto the cluster of pulled arrows. "You'll live."

"At least you could sound happier about it," Luthguster told her. Lying here on the engine-room table, he
was so enswathed in bandages that he looked like a gift-wrapped beach ball.

"It's mostly all that blubber protected you," Hester said unsympathetically. "You're a very inefficient
design."

"Well, thank you very much."

There was no doctor on the Hopeful, there being room for only five crew members and the councilman.
Hester Henshaw, 40ish, blunt of feature and speech and hand and mind, had taken a few first-aid
courses before departure, with the attitude that the human body was merely a messier-than-usual kind of
machine and that most of its ills could be repaired with a few turns of a screwdriver or taps of a hammer.
(Pliers had been useful in the current case, plucking the arrows out of the councilman.) Hester never gave
her engines sympathy while banging away at them, so why should she give sympathy to Luthguster? "I'll
give you some coffee," she offered grudgingly.

Luthguster knew Hester's coffee from hearsay. "No, thank you!"

"Don't worry, you won't leak. I plugged all the holes."

Luthguster closed his eyes. A moan leaked out.



Lieutenant Billy Shelby, handsome, romantic, idealistic, bright as a bowling ball, clutched the microphone
in his left hand, white flag in his right, and said, "Ready, sir."

The captain hesitated. "Are you sure, Billy?"

"He already volunteered, Captain," Ensign Benson pointed out. "Obviously we have to make contact with
the Geminoids somehow."