"Timothy Zahn - A Coming of Age" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

"Yeah," another seconded. "Those monster movies are dumb."

"Tell you what," Lisa said. "Let's start with something different and save the movies and singing for
later. We'll take turns telling stories, okay? They can be as scary as you want," she added as the boy
who'd voted for monster movies opened his mouth to object. He closed it again, and a gleam came
into his eye.

Leaning back, Lisa stifled a satisfied smile. She'd never yet seen a round of storytelling that couldn't
hold a work crew's attention for at least an hour... and she would still have the movies and singing to
fall back on. "Okay, who's ready to start?"

Three hands shot up. Lisa picked one and settled down to listen as the girl launched into a story
about three dragonmites and a batling, a story Lisa remembered hearing on the story tapes several
years ago. The other kids obviously hadn't heard it, though; they sat in absorbed silence, only the
flywheel's rotation gauge showing that they were still doing their job. Across the room, she noted,
the flickering light of a projector showed that the group at the second flywheel had already started a
movie, though the picture itselfтАФprojected against the flywheel's spinning surfaceтАФwas invisible
from where she sat. He'll learn, she thought a bit smugly, eyeing the preteen in charge of the other
crew. About an hour after lunch they'll be bouncing off the ceiling with boredomтАФand he won't have
anything in reserve to keep them quiet.

Glancing once at her watch, Lisa returned her attention to the girl's story and began to plan what they
would do next.




Chapter 2
The young man was small and thin and very nervous. Wrapped in a sailor's jersey a size too big for
him and with a cap jammed down to eyebrow level, he looked strangely like an eight-year-old
dressed in an older kid's clothes. Stanford Tirrell almost smiled at that image; but there really wasn't
anything funny about all of this. Keeping his peripheral vision on the piles of crates and equipment
lying around the dock, he stepped away from the security gate and walked out to meet the young
man.

"Mr. Potter?" the other asked as Tirrell approached. His voice made Tirrell revise his age estimate
downward. The sailor couldn't be over twenty-fourтАФbarely old enough to be out of schoolтАФand the
fact that he'd clearly been sailing for a while implied he'd dropped out early. Tirrell felt a surge of
pity for him... but he had a job to do.

"Yeah," he said gruffly in answer to the other's query. "What'ya got for me?"

The sailor locked eyes with him for an instant before switching his gaze to somewhere in the vicinity
of Tirrell's left cheek. "Raellian whiskeyтАФbut remember, you gotta pay what you said, 'cause if my

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A Coming of Age

usual buyer finds outтАФ"