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

“Struck?’ Echoed the captain. “Struck?”

“Theatrical term,” Pam told him. “It means to dismantle a set and take it off the stage.”

“You can’t dismantle a spaceship, “ the captain said. “Not in half an hour.”

“No,” Ensign Benson said, through clenched jaws. Smoke seemed to be coming out of his ears. “But you
can put a curtain around it.” Glaring at Hester as though it were her fault, he said, “Our ship is surrounded
by your goddamn bent molecules!”



Darkness fell, a bit at a time. “I think,” said the captain inaccurately, “I think we’ll just have to sleep on
the ground.”

“Like camping out!” said the irrepressible Billy.

“Without the camp,” said the repressible councilman.

The captain said, “We’ll each have to find a declivity to sleep in.”

“Amen,” said the councilman.



“Kybee,” Pam said, “This is my declivity.”

“It’s important to retain our body heat,” Ensign Benson explained, trying to hunker down beside her.

“Thank you, Kybee,” Pam said, “But I’m really quite warm enough sleeping by myself.”

“You would be,” Ensign Benson muttered, thumping off across the darkling plain and all at once running
into a spider web. “Ptchah!” he cried, flailing at the web, then realized it wasn’t a web at all. It was a, it
was some sort of, it felt like a thin sheet or a ---

Curtain.

“Oh, boy,” Ensign Benson said. Feeling the material with both hands, maintaining a lot of body contact
with this drapery, he sidled along to the right, noticing how clothlike it was, giving when he pressed but
resisting when he pressed too hard. Somewhere there would be, there had to be, an opening.

There. His right hand slipped off the curtain’s edge and fell forward against unresisting air, and all at once,
instead of Hestia’s dull but protracted set, he was looking at somebody’s drawing room.

Comedy-of-manners time. A sofa centered, telephone on stand to its left. Several upstage doors for
slamming. Occasional furniture along the walls. Steady, not-too-bright light, source uncertain.

Ensign Benson stepped through the break and inspected more closely. Windows fakes with painted
views. Bookcase a painted façade. Telephone nonoperative. Water in ashtray, soap on mirror. Some
sort of mottled obscurity high above blocking the sky. Sofa real and soft.