"Fritz Leiber - The Number of the Beast" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leiber Fritz)

“No. I’ll come to the telepathy angle later. The Arcturi-ans are split into two” parties: those who want to
enter the Commerce Union and open their planets to alien star-ships, including Earth’s—the peace party,
in short—and those who favour a policy of strict non-intercourse which, as far as we know, always
intimately leads to war. The war party is rather the stronger of the two. Any event may tip the balance.”

“Such as a representative of the peace party coming

quietly to Earth and getting himself bumped before he

even gets down from High Chicago?” <^

“Exactly. It looks bad, Scan. It looks as if we wanted war. The other member peoples of the Commerce
Union are skeptical enough already about the ultimate peace-fulness of Earth’s intentions toward the
whole Galaxy. r. They look on the Arcturian situation as a test. They say that we accepted the Polarians
and Antareans and all the rest as equals simply because they are so different from us in form and
culture—it’s easy to admit theoretical equality with a bumblebee, say, and then perhaps do him dirt
afterward.

“But, our galactic critics ask, will Earthmen be so ready or willing to admit equality with a humanoid
race? It’s sometimes harder, you know, to agree that your own brother is a human being than to grant the
title to an anonymous peasant on the other side of the globe. They say—I continue to speak for our
galactic critics—that Earthmen will openly work for peace with Arcturus while secretly sabotaging it.”

“Including murder.”

“Right, Sean. So unless we can pin this crime on aliens —best of all on extremists in the Arcturian war
party (something I believe but can in no way prove)-—the rumour will go through the Union that Earth
wants war, while the Arcturian Earth-haters will have everything their own way.”

“Leave off the background, Jim. How was the murder done?”

Permitting himself a bitter smile, the Young Captain said wistfully, “With the whole Galaxy for a poison
cabi-net and a weapon shop, with almost every means available of subtle disguise, of sudden approach
and instantaneous getaway—everything but a time machine, and some crook will come along with that
any day now—the murder had to be done with a blunt instrument and by one of four aliens domiciled in
the same caravansary as the Arcturian peace-party man.

“There’s something very ugly, don’t you think, in the vision of a blackjack gripped by the tentacle of an
octo-poid or in the pincers of a black Martian? To be frank, Sean, I’d rather the killer had been fancier
in his modus Operandi. It would have let me dump the heavy end of the case in the laps of the science
boys.”

“I was always grateful myself when I could invoke the physicists,” the Old Lieutenant agreed, “It’s
marvellous what coloured lights and the crackle of Geiger counters do to take the pressure off a plain
policeman. These four aliens you mention are the telepaths?”

“Right, Scan. Shady characters, too, all four of them, criminals for hire, which makes it harder. And each
of them takes the typical telepath point of view—Almighty, how it exasperates me! That we ought to
know which one of them is guilty without asking questions! They know well enough that Earthmen aren’t
telepathic, but still they hide behind the lofty pretence that every intelligent inhabitant of the Cosmos must