"Robert F. Young - In Saturn's Rings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

A filthy old man.
That was what Hera Christopoulos had called him when the Saturnia police had led her shrieking
from her bedchamber. Disheveled, half-naked in the obscene negligee in which she had adorned herself
to awaken his desire and which revealed a dagger-birthmark startlingly similar to Dione's, she had
screamed the words at the top of her voice. "Filthy old man," she screamed, face white, and suddenly,
shockingly, thin. "I made the Christopoulos fortune тАФ not Zeus! It was I who deserved your loyalty тАФ
not him. And you sold me out! Filthy old man! Filthy old Peeping Tom!"
Confronted with the bones at the bottom of the drained pool, she had not even bothered to conceal
her guilt. "It would only have been for twenty or thirty more years anyway," she said. "Maybe it's better
this way." Abruptly her voice rose. "It was all his fault! There would have been enough in reserve to have
lasted us for another century if he hadn't squandered it, if he hadn't given it away. Given it to his
mistresses. 'Would you be beautiful forever?' he asked them, and they fawned at his feet. Then he
sickened of them and let them wither away, one by one, and found others to give away his years to. My
years. And then he tried to cheat me out of the handful we had left. Well, I beat him there. I'm glad I fed
him to the fish. I hope they dined well." She gave a hideous laugh. "I'll bet his flesh was stringy, though. I'll
bet his skin was tough!"
More laughter erupted from her, each burst more hideous than the last, and finally the police dragged
her from the room. Then the Inspector began to question Matthew.

Matthew withheld nothing. He had nothing to withhold. But the questions which the Inspector threw
at him told him more than his answers told the Inspector.
They told him that the condition of the bones at the bottom of the pool indicated that Zeus IX had
climbed into his bath shortly after sending his message to Matthew. They told him that the House of
Christopoulos had no heirs and that it would become the property of the Hyperion Satrapy. They told
him that the House itself had long been a source of mystery to the Saturnia police, and that they had been
eagerly waiting for years for a pretext to break into it. They told him that the Inspector was completely in
the dark as to Hera's reason for murdering her husband and equally in the dark as to Zeus IX's reason
for ordering Matthew to put the capsule in orbit. They also told him that the Saturnia authorities knew
nothing about the Hyperion-Bimini shuttle, and hence knew nothing whatsoever about the nature of the
Bimini cargo.
Neither did Old Matt North. And now that the Saturnia authorities were going to bring the capsule
down themselves and launch an official investigation, he probably never would know. UnlessтАФ
He paused on the wind-swept ice-flats. Deliberately, he finished the thought: Unless he brought it
down himself.
Well, why not? Who had a better right to bring it down than the man who had pushed it all the way
to Bimini and all the way back again? Who, indeed!
He began to run. Actually, it was more of a stepped-up shuffle than a run, but it was the best that he
could do.
He was gasping when he reached the port, but he did not stop, and minutes later he was in his
jet-tractor, climbing, climbing, up the dark and breathless stairway of the night and into the great
star-ceilinged hall of space. He caught the capsule deftly, brought it down on a Harlequin-orbit of nights
and lays and dawns and set it on the lift-platform. He got out and climbed up on the platform and began
examining the meteor-pitted hull. Dawn had departed. Morning was airing the first dirty linen of the day
above the warped hack yard of the horizon when at last he found the hatch.
Owing to the capsule's present position, the metal plate was low on the hull, and this made opening it
all the more difficult; but finally the final dog gave way before the hammer he had brought from the
jet-tractor, and the plate fell free. He dug through the intervening layers of chemically-treated insulation to
the inner hull, expecting to find an inner hatch. He did not find one тАФhe found a valve instead.
 Wine? Had he been playing Bacchus all these weary years?
Well, he was at least entitled to a taste.