"Andre Norton - Cat's Eye - uc" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

thin story he had told the assignor was now thinner,
to the point of being full of holes. He was ten years
out of Norden, ten years away from any contact with
animals at all. Yet Troy clung to one hope. The assignor
had sent him, and the machine was supposed to be
always right in its selection.

He looked about him. The massed foliage of the
center square was a riot of luxuriant vegetation, which
combined plants and shrubs from half-a-dozen worlds
into a pattern of growing—red-green, yellow-green,
blue-green, silver— And he began to long with every
fiber of his semistarved body that he would be the one
Kyger wanted, even for just one day.

His spark guide danced up and down, as if to center
his attention on the doorway before which it had
paused, and then snuffed out. Troy faced Kyger's display
and drew a deep breath of wonder, for he seemed to be
staring at four different landscapes, each occupying
one-quarter of the space. And each landscape was
skillfully contrived so that a section of an outlandish
planet had been transported in miniature. In each,
small creatures moved about the business of living
and dying. It was all art tri-dee, of course, but the
workmanship was superb and would completely en-
thrall any prospective customer.

Reluctantly Troy approached the door itself, a barrier
where plexaglass had been impressed with a startling
and vivid pattern of weird and colorful insects, none of
11

which he recognized. There was no sign that the
establishment was open for business, and he had no
guide to lead him behind the mass of buildings to a
rear entrance. Troy hesitated uncertainly before the
closed door until, among the imprisoned creatures of
the center panel, a portion of face with reasonable
human features appeared. Round dark eyes set in
yellow skin regarded him with no trace of interest or

emotion.

Troy held up his wrist so that the employment mark
might be fully visible to those eyes. Unblinkingly
they centered upon it. Then the stretch of yellow cheek,
the broad nose, vanished. The creatures in the panel
seemed to flutter as that barrier arose. And a flow of
warm air, redolent with many strange smells, engulfed