"Donald Westlake - SH4 - The World's A Stage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Westlake Donald E)

plastoak arm of his chair. “J. Rainsford Farnsworth would be about five hundred and forty-three by now,
and that’s old even for an actor.”



Gathered around the air lock were two thirds of the Hopeful’s complement: Captain Standforth,
Astrogator Stokes, Lieutenant Shelby and Chief Engineer Hestor Hanshaw, a stocky blunt woman with a
stocky blunt manner, who was saying, “I didn’t like that thump. Bad for the engines.”

“I didn’t like it either,” Captain Standforth told her. “Made me cut myself.” He showed her the scratched
finger.

Hester, the closest thing they had to a ship’s doctor, frowned at the scratch a millisecond, then said,
“paint a little antirust compound on it. Be good as new.”

Bemused, the captain gazed at his finger. “Are you sure?”

Ensign Benson and Councilman Luthguster joined the group, and Billy armed the councilman with his
microphone, “It’s all set, “ he said. “Just talk straight into it.”

“Fine.”

“Not yet,” Ensign Benson said.

The councilman stepped out onto the small platform suspended halfway up the side of the ship, and his
amplified voice rolled out over a dusty landscape reminiscent of certain sections of Eastern Oklahoma in
early June.
“Citizens of J. Railsford Farnsworth Repertory com---Ack!”

Inside the ship, Ensign Benson frowned. “Ack?”

Councilman Luthguster bundled hastily back into the ship like a stockbroker into the bar car. “Those
aren’t people! They’re, they’re things!”

“Stop talking into the microphone,” Ensign Benson said.

Billy looked out the air lock. “Oh, Wow! Cute bug-eyed monsters!”

“What?” Stepping impatiently out onto the platform, Ensign Benson found himself gazing down on as
motley a collection of creatures as ever was lit by the same sun. Nonhuman to a fault but, as Billy had
said, cute. They were tiny round puffballs with human legs and wings and yellow wigs over fairy faces.
Tall, androgynous sprites in tights. Hoppers with humps. And in front of them stood a beautiful womanoid
with gauzy wings and a gauzy gown and long, pointed ears, and a big hairy manoid with a great purple
cloak and long feet that curled up into spirals at the end.

Loudly enough for Ensign Benson to hear, the manoid addressed the womanoid: “Ill met by moonlight,
proud Titania.”

In the doorway, the captain said, “That one over there looks like a bird, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Billy.