"Zach Hughes - Mother Lode" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Zach)

he began to wiggle. She put him down, punched up a very stiff drink, sat
in the control chair. Mop took his place on the console and lay down, his
head held up alertly, ready for conversation.

"Mr. Mop," she said, "looks to me as if this belt of rock was once a
planet of considerable size."

Mop said, "Wurf."

"Which makes you think, doesn't it?" She took a long sip of her drink.
"The U.P.'s planet buster could have done this to a planet. Did, as a matter
of fact, to a few Zede worlds during the Zede War, but that was just a
thousand years ago, and our friend, there—" she shifted her eyes to the
skull—" is very damned definitely more than a thousand years old."

Mop lifted his right paw, asking for a handshake. She complied, held
the paw. "What we should do, I guess, is send a blinkstat back to X&A
right now."

Mop cocked his head.

"Yeah, you're right," she said. "We've got everything we own tied up in
this expedition. Dad's money, too. Everything wrapped up in this Mother.
I don't know how much gold we've got aboard, but I do know this. We
report our friend, here, to X&A and this whole belt will be off bounds until
it's searched for other fossils. That means that you and I wouldn't live long
enough to get back to digging gold."

She had released Mop's paw. He scratched her hand gently, demanding
her touch. She held his paw again.

"What I think is this," she said. "I think we will wait to mine this
particular rock. What I mean, sir, is this."
 Mop cocked his head. "We haven't even seen this rock, have we?"

Mop didn't say anything.

"If you ever want me to take you go—" His right ear shot up. "—you'd
better agree with me."

"Wurf," he said.

"Good," she said, nodding. "And we won't see it until we're good and
damned ready to see it, will we? If you ever want to go?"

"Wurf," Mop said.

"Because our friend there has waited an eon or two already. I think he
can wait until a nice, deserving young girl and a rather splendid pooch are
so rich that the U.P. tax men can't take it all away from us." She picked