"Piper, H Beam - Fuzzy 3 - Other People" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

pleasantly cool, came in at the open end of the prefab hut, bringing
with it from outside the noises of construction work to compete with
the whir and clatter of computers and roboclerks in the main office
beyond the partition. He laid down the pen, brushed his mustache
with the middle knuckle of his trigger finger, and then picked up his
pipe, relighting it. Then he took another paper out of the IN tray.

Authorization for payment of five hundred and fifty sols,
compensation for damage done to crops by Fuzzies; endorsed as
investigated and approved by George Lunt, Major Commanding,
ZNPF. He remembered the incident: a bunch of woods-Fuzzies
who had slipped through George's chain of posts at the south
edge of the Piedmont and gotten onto a sugar plantation and into
mischief. Probably ruined one tenth as many sugarplant seedlings
as the land-prawns which the Fuzzies killed there would have
destroyed. But the Government wasn't responsible for land-
prawns, and it was responsible for Fuzzies, and any planter who
wouldn't stick the Government for all the damages he could ought
to be stuffed and put in a museum as a unique specimen.

He signed it and reached for the next paper.

It was a big one, a lot of sheets stapled together. He pried out the
staple. Covering letter from Governor- General Bennett Rainsford,
attention Commissioner of Native Affairs; and then another on the
letterhead of the Charterless Zarathustra Company, Ltd., of
Zarathustra, signed by Victor Grego, Pres. He grinned. That
"Charterless" looked like typical Grego gallows humor; it also
made sense, since it kept the old initials for the trademark. And for
the cattle-brand. Anybody who'd ever tried rebranding a full-grown
veldbeest could see the advantage of that.

Acknowledgment of eighteen sunstones, total weight
93.6 carats, removed from Yellowsand Canyon for
study prior to signing of lease agreement. Copy of receipt signed
by Grego and his chief geologist, endorsed by Gerd van Riebeek,
Chief of Scientific Branch, Zarathustra Commission for Native
Affairs, and by Lieutenant Hirohito Bjornsen, ZNPF. Color
photographs of each of the eighteen stones: they were beautiful,
but no photograph could do justice to a warm sunstone, glowing
with thermofluorescence. He looked at them carefully. He was an
old sunstone-digger himself, and knew what he was looking at.
One hundred seventeen thousand sols on the Terra gem market;
S-42,120 in royalties for the Government, in trust for the Fuzzies.
And this wasn't even the front edge of the beginning; these were
just the prospect samples. This time next year . . .

He initialed Ben Rainsford's letter, stapled the stuff together, and
tossed it into the FILE tray. As he did, the communication screen
beside him buzzed. Turning in his chair, he flipped the screen on