"Judith Merril - The Lady Was a Tramp" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merril Judith)

THE LADY WAS A TRAMP
SHE HAD been lovely once, sleek-lined and proud, with shining flanks; and men had come to her
with hungry hearts and star-filled eyes, and high pulse of adventure in their blood.
Now she was old. Her hide was scarred with use, her luster dulled; though there was beauty in her
still it was hidden deep. A man had to know where to look—and he had to care.

The young man left the conditioned coolness of the Administration Building and paused outside the
door to orient. Then he strode briskly forward, ignoring the heat that wilted his uniform collar and damply
curled the edges of the freshly stamped papers in his breast pocket. He passed the inner tier of docks,
refusing to look to left or right at the twin proud heights of gleaming Navy vessels.
Beyond them, alone in the outmost ring, the Lady Jane sat on her base in the concrete hole, waiting.
In the white-light glare of the shadowless Dome, each smallest pit and pockmark of twenty years' usage
stood out in cruel relief against the weathered darkness of her hull. Potbellied, dumpy, unbeautiful, she
squatted without impatience inside the steel framework of supports, while her tanks were flushed and her
tubes reamed clean. When the dock gang was done, and the ravages of the last voyage repaired insofar
as could be, she would set forth once more on her rounds of the ports in space. Meantime, she rested.
The young man paused. It was his first good look at the Lady Jane. He half-turned back; but it was
too late now. Fury, or training, or despair, or some of all of them, moved him on.
"That's him all right," Anita smiled, and turned a knob on the Lady Jane's viewpoint screen; the figure
leaped toward them with focussed clarity, and the IBMan insignia showed up on the jacket sleeve.
"Mad dogs and eye-bee-men," Chan quoted softly, and leaned forward to study the young man with
mock amazement. On the tenth "day" of Lunar sunlight it was still possible to keep moderately cool inside
an unsealed ship, and the central Administration Building was kept at a steady seventy, day or night. But
out in the atmosphere dome, it was hot. Yet the young man walking briskly toward the ship wore formal
greens, and his shirt was bound at his neck with a knotted tie. Chandra leaned back, picked up a tall cold
glass and shook his head.
"Look at him, Chan! He's a kid. . . ."
Chan shrugged. "You knew that before. You got the papers. . . ."
Impatiently, she shook her head. "I know. But look at him. . . ."
"I wasn't any older—" Chandra began.
"Yes you were! I don't know what your papers said, but—look at him. And you weren't an IBMan.
And we were all younger then. And—darling, you were a man!"
He laughed and stood up, rumpling her hair as he passed. "Well, if that's all that's eating on you,
babe—hell, four of us kept you happy half-way home."
He ducked through the bunk-room door as she started to rise. "Don't shoot," he called back.
"It ain't so funny, honey." She stood watching the screen. "What's bothering me is, who's going to
keep him happy?"

Terence Hugh Carnahan, Lieutenant, U.N.N. Reserves, was twenty-four years old and newly
commissioned. He was stuffed to the gills with eight full years of Academy training, precision, and
knowledge. The shiny new stripes on his sleeve and the dampening papers inside his breast pocket were
the prizes he'd worked for and dreamed of as long as it mattered. The fruits were sour now, and the
dream was curdled. A man might approach the Lady incited by lust to a venture of greed; but the sight of
her was enough to wipe out the last visions of glory.
The Lieutenant moved on, more slowly. He stopped as a three-wheeled red-and-white-striped
baggage truck swung out in a wide crazy curve from behind the Navy ship to the left and careened to a
stop at the Lady's side.
A tall thin man in rumpled full-dress whites leaped out of the bucket, swinging a canvas suitcase in his
hand. He climbed aboard the ship's waiting elevator and it started up.
Terry walked on and waited beside the truck for the cage to come down. When it did, he produced