"Donald Westlake - SH5 - Hitch Your Spaceship To A Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Westlake Donald E)

“Oh, all sorts.”

Ensign Benson had been deeply frowning, intensely brooding, acutely staring into the middle distance, but
now all at once he nodded and said, “Hyperradio.”

Jim frowned around his pipe. “Say what?”

“You must be in hyperradio contact with one of the colonies we already visited.”

“Not us,” Jim said. “never heard of hyperradio.”

“Then someone else has been here from off planet. Recently.”

“No, sir.” Jim shook his head and Nero’s reins.

Hank said, “You’re our first visitors in five hundred years. You’ll be starting the guestbook.”

Ensign Benson gave him the old gimlet eye. “You knew we were coming. You knew how many of us and
where we were from and our mission. Somebody had to tell you all that.”

“Easy,” Hank said, grinning. “The stars told us.”



The town was small but busy, with a bustling, shop-filled main street, Nero-powered surreys and wagons
everywhere, and an aura of prosperity and contentment.

“What’s that?” the captain asked as they made their way around a white-stone obelisk in its own little
center-of-the-street garden.

“The peace memorial,” Hank said. “We’ve never had anybody to have a war with, but the town plan
called for a memorial there----our ancestors’ original town back on earth had one at that spot----so
about a hundred years ago, they just went ahead and put up a peace memorial.”

People waved as they went by, and a dressed-up reception committee waited out front of the grange
hall. “I know you’ve all had breakfast,” Hank said, “but you could probably tuck into some real food.
Come on.”

Everybody climbed out of the surrey. Billy Shelby, a happy and innocent smile on his face, said to ensign
Benson, “Golly, Kybee, isn’t this place nice?”

“I’m not so sure,” the ensign muttered, glowering at all those happy people. “Keep your eyes open, Billy.
There’s something wrong here.”

It was a gala breakfast, laid on just for the visitors and with nearly 50 of the most prominent local citizens
in attendance. The Terrans were introduced to, among many others, the principals of both high schools,
three ministers, one priest, four doctors, both judges, the police chief, the editors of both newspapers….
Oh, the list went on and on. Then they all sat at long trencher tables under crepe-paper decorations of
umber and sienna---Earth colors--- and happy chitchat filled the hall as the food came out.