"Robert F. Young - The Worlds of Robert F. Young" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

are young. The month is June. A romance is virtually bound to blossom, and soon a romance does.
Nevertheless it is a romance that will never be recorded in the annals of time.
Why not? you ask.
You'll see.

They spent the rest of the day together. It was Becky's day off from the Silver Spoon, where she
waited on tables. Roger, who was sweating out the sixth application he had tendered since graduating
from the Lakeport Institute of Technology, had every day off for the moment. That evening they dined in
a modest caf├й, and afterward they played the jukebox and danced. The midnight moment upon the steps
of the apartment house where Becky lived was a precious one, and their first kiss was so sweet and
lingering on Roger's lips that he did not even wonder, until he reached his hotel room, how a young man
such as himself тАФwho saw love as an impediment to a scientific careerтАФcould have fallen so deeply into
it in so short a span of time.
In his mind's eye the bench in the park had already taken on the aspect of a shrine, and the very next
morning saw him walking down the winding walk, eager to view the sacred object once again. Consider
his chagrin when he rounded the last curve and saw a girl in a blue dress sitting on the very section of the
hallowed object that his goddess had consecrated the most!
He sat down as far away from her as the length of the bench permitted. Perhaps if she had been
glamorous he wouldn't have minded so much But she wasn't Her face was too thin, and her legs were too
long. Compared with the red dress Becky had worn, hers was a lackluster rag, and as for her feather-cut
titian hair, it was an insult to cosmetology.
She was writing something in a little red notebook and didn't appear to notice him at first. Presently,
however, she glanced at her wrist watch, and thenтАФas though the time of day had somehow apprised
her of his presenceтАФshe looked in his direction.
It was a rather mildтАФif startledтАФlook, and did not in the least deserve the dirty one he squelched it
with. He had a glimpse, just before she hastily returned her attention to her notebook, of a dusting of
golden freckles, a pair of eyes the hue of bluebirds and a small mouth the color of sumac leaves after the
first hard frost. He wondered idly if his initial reaction to her might not have been different if he bad used
a less consummate creature than Becky for a criterion.
Suddenly he became aware that she was looking at him again. "How do you spell matrimony?" she
asked.
He gave a start "Matrimony?"
"Yex. How do you spell it?'
"M-a-t-r-i-m-o-n-y," Roger said.
"Thankx." She made a correction in her notebook, then she turned toward him again. тАЬIтАЩm a very
poor spellerтАФespecially when it comes to foreign words."
"Oh, you're from another country, then?" That would explain her bizarre accent.
"Yex, from Buzenborg. It's a xmall provinxe on the xouthernmoxt continent of the sixth planet of the
star you call Altair. I juxt arrived on earth this morning."
From the matter-of-fact way she said it, you'd have thought that the southernmost continent of Altair
VI was no more remote from Lakeport than the southernmost continent of Sol III and that spaceships
were as common as automobiles. Small wonder that the scientist in Roger was incensed. Small wonder
that he girded himself immediately to do battle.
His best bet, be decided, would be a questions-and-answers campaign designed to lure her into
deeper and deeper water until finally she went under. "What's your name?" he began casually.
"Alayne. What'x yourx?"
He told her. Then: "Don't you have a surname?"
"No. In Buzenborg we dixpenxed with xurnamex centuries ago."
He let that go by. "All right, then, where's your spaceship?'
"I parked it by a barn on a dexerted farm a few milex outxide the xity. With the force field turned on,