"C M Kornbluth - Friend To Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

These he could bear, but, somehow, Smith did not like to look at the leader of the posse. It was odd,
but he did not like to look at her.



She had no business there! If they were ghosts why was she there? He hadn't killed her, and, as far as
he knew, Amy was alive and doing business in the Open Quarter atPortsmouth. It wasn't fair, Smith
wearily thought. He inched across the featureless plain and Amy followed with her eyes.



Let us! Let us! We have waited so long! Wait longer, little ones. Wait longer.



Smith, arriving at the planet, had gravitated to the Open Quarter and found, of course, that his reputation
had preceded him. Little, sharp-faced men had sidled up to pay their respects, and they happened to
know of a job waiting for the right touch-He brushed them off.



Smith found the virginal, gray-eyed Amy punching tapes for the Transport Company, tepidly engaged to
a junior executive. The daughter of the Board Chairman, she fancied herself daring to work in the rough
office at the port.



First was the child's play of banishing her young man. A minor operation, it was managed with the
smoothness and dispatch one learns after years of such things. Young Square-Jaw had been quite willing
to be seduced by a talented young woman from the Open Quarter, and had been so comically astonished
when the photographs appeared on the office bulletin board!



He had left by the next freighter, sweltering in a bunk by the tube butts, and the forlorn gray eyes were
wet for him.



But how much longer must we^wait?



Much longer, little ones. It is weak—too weak.



The posse, Smith thought vaguely, was closing in. That meant, he supposed, that he was dying. It would
not be too bad to be dead, quickly and cleanly. He had a horror of filth.