"H. Beam Piper - Fuzzy Papers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

This one dodged the thrown flint, scuttled off a few feet and turned, waving its antennae in what
looked like derision. Jack reached for his hip again, then checked the motion. Pistol cartridges cost like
crazy; they weren't to be wasted in fits of childish pique. Then he reflected that no cartridge fired at a
target is really wasted, and that he hadn't done any shooting recently. Stooping again, he picked up
another stone and tossed it a foot short and to the left of the prawn. As soon as it was out of his fingers,
his hand went for the butt of the long automatic. It was out and the safety off before the flint landed; as
the prawn fled, he fired from the hip. The quasi-crustacean disintegrated. He nodded pleasantly.

"0l' man Holloway's still hitting things he shoots at."

Was a time, not so long ago, when he took his abilities for granted. Now he was getting old enough
to have to verify them. He thumbed on the safety and holstered the pistol, then picked up the glove and
put it on again.

Never saw so blasted many land-prawns as this summer. They'd been bad last year, but nothing
like this. Even the oldtimers who'd been on Zarathustra since the first colonization said so. There'd be
some simple explanation, of course; something that would amaze him at his own obtuseness for not
having seen it at once. Maybe the ab normally dry weather had something to do with it. Or increase of
something they ate, or decrease of natural enemies.

He'd heard that land-prawns had no natural enemies; he ques tioned that. Something killed them.
He's seen crushed prawn shells, some of them close to his camp. Maybe stamped on by something with
hoofs, and then picked clean by insects. He'd ask Ben Rainsford; Ben ought to know.

Half an hour later, the scanner gave him another interruption pattern. He laid it aside and took up
the small vibrohammer. This time it was a large bean, light pink in color. He separated it from its matrix of
flint and rubbed it, and instantly it began glowing.

"Ahhh! This is something like it, now!"

He rubbed harder; warmed further on his pipe bowl, it fairly blazed. Better than a thousand sols, he
told himself. Good color, too. Getting his gloves off, he drew out the little leather bag from underhis shirt,
loosening the drawstrings by which it hung around his neck. There were a dozen and a half stones inside,
all bright as live coals. He looked at them for a moment, and dropped the new sunstone in among them,
chuckling happily.

Victor Grego, listening to his own recorded voice, rubbed the sun-stone on his left finger with the
heel of his right palm and watched it brighten. There was, he noticed, a boastful ring to his voice--not the
suave, unemphatic tone considered proper on a message-tape. Well, if anybody wondered why, when
they played that tape off six months from now in Johannesburg on Terra, they could look in the cargo
holds of the ship that had brought it across five hundred light-years of space. Ingots of gold and platinum
and gadolinium. Furs and biochemicals and brandy. Perfumes that defied synthetic imitation; hardwoods
no plastic could copy. Spices. And the steel coffer full of sunstones. Almost all luxury goods, the only
really dependable commodities in interstellar trade.

And he had spoken of other things. Veldbeest meat, up seven percent from last month, twenty per
cent from last year, still in demandon a dozen planets unable to produce Terran-type foodstuffs. Grain,
leather, lumber. And he had added a dozen more items to the lengthening list of what Zarathustra could
now produce in adequate quantities and no longer needed to import. Not fishhooks and boot buckles,