"Mike Resnick - Tales Of The Galactic Midway - Alien-Tamer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

The spaceport itself was unimpressive, as most of them were. He had been raised on
science fiction films and pulp magazines, and had envisioned—as had all the
carnies—an unending series of futuristic cities and wonders spanning the length of
the galaxy. In point of fact, he reflected, most of the worlds he had seen resembled
nothing more than the outskirts of Indianapolis.
This current one, and its spaceport, bore an uncanny similarity to Springfield,
Missouri.
It was obvious that no passenger ships ever took off or landed here, for while there
was a small control tower he could find nothing remotely resembling a passenger
terminal. The landing field itself was perhaps half a mile in diameter, and currently
held only nine small ships, including his own.
There was a beat-up hangar about a quarter of a mile away, just off the edge of the
strip, and both the strip and the hangar looked as if they had seen not just better days
but better centuries.
Three hundred yards to his right was a takeoff shaft, which was nothing more than a
circle of heat-resistant webbing strung out over a deep hole which theoretically
contained the heat and flames from departing spaceships. The scars extending for
hundreds of feet in all directions implied that the shaft needed to be deeper, or at least
farther away from the stationary ships.
An odd-looking bird with leathery wings and dull-gray plumage flew overhead,
croaking hoarsely. He watched it for a moment, then shrugged and lowered himself to
the ground. He had expected his contact to be waiting for him, but as far as he could
tell the field was all but deserted. There were a couple of tan panda-like beings
working on one of the ships, but they paid no attention to him, and finally he began
walking across the landing strip to the hangar, studying the tall grasses surrounding
the spaceport and reluctantly concluding that they didn't look recently fertilized.
He had almost reached the hangar when a door receded and a huge, batlike creature
emerged. It had a foreshortened face, not unlike a bulldog or a boxer, with a
pronounced underbite and very visible fangs. Both its hands and its feet possessed
prehensile thumbs, and its wrists and ankles were joined to a very thin flap of
membrane.
Its multifaceted eyes fell on Monk, and it emitted an ominous guttural noise.
“Back off,” said Monk, activating his translating device.
The creature twitched its cupped ears and bared its fangs.
“I ain't looking for no trouble,” said Monk, backing up a step and flexing his knees in
case he had to meet an attack.
The creature growled again, made some gesture with its clawlike hand that Monk was
unable to interpret, and walked back inside the hangar on its short, stocky legs.
It emerged again a moment later, and this time Monk had a better opportunity to study
it. It stood almost seven feet tall, was a flaming red in color, and was covered by
short, coarse, thick hair. There was the look of a predator about it, and the fact that it
snorted and rumbled as it breathed did not detract from that impression.
It carried something in its left hand, and when it was about five feet away Monk saw
that it was a mechanism built along the lines of his own two-way translating device.
He had not seriously considered how a killer creature from his childhood nightmares
might have gained access to a spaceport hangar, but although he knew the notion to
be ridiculous, he was nonetheless greatly relieved to see this obvious sign of
sentience.
The creature raised the device to its mouth and spoke into it.
“You are Jupiter Monk, ofThe Ahasuerus and Flint Traveling Carnival and Sideshow