"Zach Hughes - Gold Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Zach)

accredited institution.

So what does a girl do when she's light-years from home, broke, unable
to get a job to earn passage back to New Earth? Does she just give up, lie
down, and starve? No. She lies down, but not to starve.

"At least," Jan had told Peter Jaynes, after about four nights of his
nonstop attempt to convince her that tug duty was not all bad, "they've
eradicated all the things that used to be called social diseases."

Tigian was an odd planet. Tigians were artists, and, therefore, a bit
more liberal than most. On Tigian, whores were often invited to the best
parties. It was a good living, and she was meeting some interesting people.

Before Pete could get her to marry him he had to remind her of her
New Earth upbringing, of the morality with which she'd been instilled as a
young girl. He had to make her weep.

They were together. Jan, being fairly new at her occupation, didn't
know much about spacers. She knew only that they seemed to have money
to burn when they were at the Spacer's Rest. She didn't know that in
wooing her, Pete had spent most of the earnings from his last tour on a
tug. She didn't know that the fine, spacious apartment where they
honeymooned had been rented with an advance on Pete's next tour. When
Pete came in with a one way ticket for one to New Earth she wept for the
second time since she'd known him.

"It's the only way, honey," he'd told her.

"You're asking me to go back to New Earth and wait? Wait for three
years?"

"I have to go back to work. We're broke. There's enough to get you
home and give you living money until I can have the company send you
more."

Pete had learned, then, the sort of woman he'd married. "I will not
allow you to leave me," she'd said. "You will not dump me somewhere for
three years, damn you, just when I'm getting to like being with you."

At that time there were things about Jan that Pete didn't know. He
didn't know that she'd come to dislike all men. Her idea of heaven was to
be alone, totally alone, forever alone, never to be touched, never to hear a
man's voice.

She had joined with a loser for one reason—to get out of the Spacer's
Rest. She'd agreed to marry Pete because, in her mind, having just one
man touch her was preferable, but only slightly, to being touched by any
man with the money in his pocket. Then she fell in love with this loser, and
loved being touched by him, and he was going to ship her light-years away