"Robert F. Young - Passage to Gomorrah" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

Her shoulders had touched the wall of the convent's recreation room, and she knew she could delay
no longer. She forced herself to relax, forced a warm smile to her lips. "No," she said softly. "I'm not
afraid."
The space marine's eyes grew more glazed than ever. "Thash good," he said. "Thash what I wanted
to hear." He stepped closer to her, his arms outstretched, his face grotesque with lust.
She waited till he had nearly touched her, then she moved in without warning, brought her knee up
sharply and, when he doubled forward, chopped him viciously on the back of the neck with the edge of
her palm. He dropped, writhing, to the floor, and she proceeded to kick him deftly with her pointed
shoes. She did not stop till he lay still, till the tips of her shoes were crimson, and then she stood, sick and
trembling, in the harsh fluorescent light.
"Excellent!" the female instructor said, entering the room. "A splendid performance, Berenice. It may
seem cruel, at first, to employ real victims in our exercises, but there's no other way to learn to defend
yourself effectivelyтАФand beasts like this marine here are just the sort creatures that forget, in their
drunkenness, the inflexible rules of our profession, and the sanctity of a lady of the stars. We did not
invite him here, you remember. We merely left the force-fence deactivated long enough for him to enter
of his own accord, the door ajar, the light burning, so he could see it."
Berenice shuddered. She saw the ecstatic expression on the instructor's ancient, raddled face and she
remembered that she herself would be an instructor some dayтАФor a house-mother or a liaison
ladyтАФwhen her beauty had dimmed and her flesh had lost its firmness and not even the low-est
longstarman would want it. She shuddered again. "Isn'tтАФisn't that an invitation, in a way?" she asked.
"Of course not!" the instructor said. "Come, we'll call his ship and have him removed. He should be
sober by the time he gets out of sick bayтАФif he ever does...."

"But where are the mon-sters?" Cross asked, leaning over the rail of the observa-tion platform and
gazing across the tarmac.
"There's a settlement of them on the other side of the mountains," Obronski said. "They're not
permitted inside the port area."
"And we're not permitted outsideтАФ"
"That's right. So forget about them."
"But there must be some way to see them."
"Sure, there is. If you had your own ship you could land near the settlement. But the port authority
would be pretty tough on you if you got caught. Besides, why should you want to see them? I know I
wouldn't."
"I guess I wouldn't either," Cross lied.
He lowered his eyes, idly watched the payload of fallen ladies of the stars filing out of the lock,
accompanied by their lovers.
"I keep wondering," Ob-ronski said. "You'd think they'd have more sense."
"Who?"
"The ladies of the stars, who else? They've got the whole galaxy at their fingertips and they go and let
some space bum knock them up! Why?"
"Maybe they fall in love," Cross said.
"Love!" Obronski spat. "You've got a lot to learn, boy, even if you did make Second Mate on your
fourth run. There's no love in space, and the only woman you'll ever have is the one you've got money
enough to pay for!"
"Sure, I know," Cross said. He raised his eyes from the gangplank, looked out across the tarmac to
where the rum-pled hills formed green and purple preludes to the majes-tic line of mountains. I won-der
what they're really like, he thought . . . Some day I'll find out.

"The Plenipotentiary from New Jericho presents his compliments, my lady," the house-mother said.
"He was quite intrigued by her lady-ship's film sequence and begs the honor of her company."