"James Tiptree Jr -- Happiness is a Warm Spaceship" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tiptree James Jr)

cubicles, each containing a dark bulge the size of a coconut. He heard a faint, chittering sound.
Quent began to examine the dialed panel beside the hatch. It did not seem to match the leaflet
diagram. Somewhere above him the ladder clanked.
“Futile,” hissed a voice overhead. Quent looked up. A thin gray arm snaked down and
plucked the folder from his grasp. Quent had a glimpse of bulging, membranous eyes set in a
long skull, and then the head retracted and its owner clambered down. It, or he, was a
lizardlike biped taller than Quent, wearing a complicated vest.
“You are Quent—our new first officer,” the creature clacked. Quent could see its tongue
flicker inside the beaked jaws. “I am Svensk. Welcome aboard. You will now go away while I
adjust this apparatus before the captain buggers it completely.”
“The captain?”
“Captain Imray. Hopeless with mechanisms. Do you intend to remain here chattering until
these ridiculous ants decongeal?”
Quent climbed back to the wardroom, where somebody was trying to sing. The performer
turned out to be a short, furry individual in officer’s whites with his hat on the back of his head
and a bulb of greenish liquor in one brown fist.
“Il pleut dans mon coeur comme il pleut dans la ville,” caroled the stranger.
He broke off to pop round yellow eyes at Quent.
“Ah, our new first officer, is it not? Permit me.” Incisors flashed as he grabbed Quent by
the shoulders and raked sharp vibrissae across Quent’s cheeks. “Sylvestre Sylla, at your
service.”
Quent exposed his own square teeth.
“Quent.”
“Quent?” Sylla repeated. “Not Rathborne Whiting Quent, Junior!” he asked in a different
tone, touching a black tongue to his incisors.
Quent nodded, coughing. The wardroom seemed to reek of musk.
“Welcome aboard, First Officer Quent. Welcome to the Ethel P. Rosenkrantz, patrol boat.
Not, of course, the Sirian,” Sylla said unctuously, “but a worthy ship, voyons. I trust you are not
disappointed in your first assignment, First Officer Quent?”
Quent’s jaw set.
“No.”
“Permit me to show you to your quarters, First Officer.”
Sylla waved Quent to the upper ladderway, which opened from the wardroom ceiling.
Above the wardroom was a section of cubicles for the crew, each accessible by a flexible
sphincter port. Beyond these the shaftway ended in the bridge.
“Here you are, First Officer,” Sylla pointed. “And your luggage, sir?”
“I left it outside,” said Quent.
“Doubtless it is still there,” replied Sylla and dived gracefully through another sphincter.
Quent climbed down and exited from the tube in time to rescue his dittybox from a
grapple. As he wrestled it up the shaftway he could hear Sylla promising to defeather
Alouette.
The cubicle proved to be slightly smaller than his cadet quarters on the Adastra. Quent
sighed, sat down on his hammock gimbal, took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. He
put his hat back on and took out his pocket recorder. The recorder had a played message tab in
place. Quent flicked the rerun and held it to his ear.
Ping-ping-ping, went the official channels signal. He heard a sonorous throat-clearing.
“Congratulations on your Academy record, Lieutenant. Your mother would have been, um,
proud. Well done. And now, good luck on your first mission. One that will, I trust, profoundly
enlighten you.”
 The recorder pinged again and cut off. Quent’s frown deepened. He shook his head slowly.