"Mack Reynolds - Planetary Agent X" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Mack)

PLANETARY
AGENT X

by Mack Reynolds




ACE BOOKS, INC.
1120 Avenue of the Americas
New York, N.Y. 10036




PLANETARY AGENT X
Copyright ©, 1965, by Mack Reynolds
This novel originally appeared in Analog in two parts under the
titles Ultima Thule and Pistolero.
 All Rights Reserved




PART ONE


I

At least he had got far enough to wind up with a personal
interview. It is one thing doing up an application and seeing it go
onto an endless tape and be fed into the maw of a machine and
then to receive, in a matter of moments, a neatly printed rejection.
It is another to receive an appointment to be interviewed by a
placement officer in the Commissariat of Interplanetary Affairs,
Department of Personnel. Ronny Bronston was under no illusions.
Nine out of ten men of his age annually made the same
application. Almost all were annually rejected. Statistically
speaking, practically nobody ever got an interplanetary position.
But he had made one step along the path of a lifetime ambition.
 He stood at easy attention immediately inside the door. At the
desk at the far side of the room the placement officer was going
through a sheaf of papers. He looked up and said, “Ronald
Bronston? Sit down. You’d like an interplanetary assignment, eh?
So would I.”
Ronny took the chair. For a moment he tried to appear alert,
earnest, ambitious but not too ambitious, fearless, devoted to the
cause, and indispensable. For a moment. Then he gave it up and
looked like Ronny Bronston.
The other looked him over. The personnel official saw a man