"Robert A. Heinlein - Lost Legacy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

“Practically. Come on in, Phil.”

Huxley, in slacks and polo shirt, was followed by another figure. He
turned to him. “Joan, this is Bei Cobum, Doctor Ben Cobum.
Doctor Coburn, Mis Freeman.”

“Awfully nice of you to let me come, Miss Freeman.”

“Not at all. Doctor. Phil had told me so much about you that I have
been anxious to meet you.” The conventionalities flowed with the
ease of all long-established tribal taboo.


7
“Call him Ben, Joan. It’s good for his ego.”

While Joan and Phil loaded the car Coburn looked over the young
woman’s studio house. A single large room, panelled in knotty pine
and dominated by a friendly field-stone fireplace set about with
untidy bookcases, gave evidence of her personality. He had
stepped through open french doors into a tiny patio, paved with
mossy bricks and fitted with a barbecue pit and a little fishpond,
brilliant in the morning sunlight, when he heard himself called.

“Doc! Stir your stumps! Time’s awastin’!”

He glanced again around the patio, and rejoin the others at the
car. “I like your house. Miss Fre man. Why should we bother to
leave Beachwood

Drive when Griffith Park can’t be any pleasanter?”

“That’s easy. If you stay at home, it’s not a picnic— it’s just
breakfast. My name’s Joan.”

“May I put in a request for ‘just breakfast’ here some morning—
Joan?”

“Lay off o’ that mug, Joan,” advised Phil in a stage whisper. “His
intentions ain’t honorable.”

Joan straightened up the remains of what had recently been a
proper-sized meal. She chucked into the fire three well-picked
bones to which thick sirloin steaks were no longer attached, added
some dicarded wrapping paper and one lonely roll. She shook the
thermos jug. It gurgled slightly. “Anybody want some more
grapefruit juice?” she called.

“Any more coffee?” asked Cobum, then continued to Huxley, “His