"Ron Goulart - Galaxy Jane" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goulart Ron)

showing on their silvery ballheads, the words Scoundrel Trackers, Ltd. engraved in gloletters on
their metallic chests.

“Fellas,” said Summer, grinning amiably and holding up a hand in a stop-right-there gesture, “I
think I know who’s hired you and—”

“Dirty sod!”

“Irresponsible lout!”

“Bloody wretch!”

One of them leaped, tackling Summer just below the knees, causing him to fall over backward. He
landed on the plaz mosaic tiles with a slick thump.

A second Scoundrel Trackers robot jumped and sat, hard, on Summer’s chest. “Now give a listen to
this, mate.” Music started pouring out of a tiny speaker in his left side. Sweet, romantic music


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thick with violins.

“So?” Summer got an armlock on the squatting robot and tried to unseat him.

“Ain’t ‘e the ‘eartless one?” observed the third robot, who’d opened a compartment in his shiny
chest to reveal a small wafer-thin vidscreen.

“This here’s your song,” said the one on Summer’s chest. “The very tune you and your dear wife
loved to play of an evening whilst gathered round the bloomin’ ‘armonium in—”

“You gents do sloppy research,” Summer pointed out while trying to wrestle free of the two
mechanical men. “Maryella and I never owned a harmonium. Furthermore, that dippy tune is actually
the theme from an old Galactic Skymines commercial that aired here in the Barnum System of planets
nearly five long—”

“An’ I suppose, you cruel deserter,” inquired the third robot, tapping his picture screen, “that
this hain’t that selfsame Maryella workin’ as a-galley drudge in a cafeteria what’s orbitin’ the
worst bloomin’ planet out in the Hellquad at this—”

“Nope, it isn’t,” said Summer after a quick glance at the flickering image. “Maryella’s slim and
blond, thirty-one her last birthday. That lady’s got to be over fifty and she’s fat as well, and—”

“Well, the poor lass ‘as gone to seed since you run off to pursue your dubious career as a
muckrakin’ videojournalist, guy.”

“I didn’t run off. Maryella and I are legally divorced.” He managed to toss the robot from off his
chest, sending it smack into the one who was showing him the heartrending pictures of a woman who
wasn’t his former wife at all. Both of the ‘bots went rolling and sliding, wobbling and rattling,