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

Mop up and ruffled the blond hair on his head. "So rich that waiters will
bow and shop women will give us shit-eating grins. So rich that we'll buy
you a diamond-studded collar. Would you like that?"

"Ummmmm," Mop said, meaning, "rub my belly, Erin."

She had to go back out again to place a coded beeper in the trench
before she covered it over with debris. She did it quickly, without looking
up and around at the silent, watchful stars or the slowly tumbling
remnants of a world. When she was aboard once more she moved ship,
found a nice pocket of gold, and went to work. Three weeks later the cargo
space of the Mother Lode was heavy with ore. The generator was fully
charged. Mother went flashing back down the blink routes toward
civilization.

The latest edition of the United Planets' Directory told her that the best
place to sell her gold was a mining world on the coreward frontier of the
U.P. sector. She punched a query into the computer and the old Century
hummed and chuckled and came up with routes to the fourth planet of a
class G sun a few thousand light-years away.

She had let her hair grow during the months in space. She felt that she
was a bit old, at thirty, to wear her ash blonde tresses shoulder length, but
there didn't happen to be a hair care center nearby, so she blinked into
communicator range of a rather cold looking planet called Aspiration and
got landing instructions for the port in the principal city, Wiggston. She
was told to stay aboard until customs checked the ship. Mop, able to see
paved pads, snow, a few scraggly trees, buildings, and other items that
might need irrigating, was going bananas, leaping and whining to go out.
Erin tried to reason with him in vain. She called Wiggston Control.

"Look, fellas," she said, in her sexiest voice, "I've got a little dog over
here who is about to burst something internally because he wants to go
outside so badly. We've been in space for a few months. May I have
permission to walk around outside on the pad?"

"Let me speak to your captain," the controller said.

"You're speaking to the captain."

Silence.

"Wiggston Control, this is the Mother Lode, " she said in irritation.
"Permission to walk my dog, if you please."

"Your animal must go into quarantine," the controller said.

"The hell you say."

The controller's voice was harsh. "Do not open your hatch, Mother Lode