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

Real eggs. Real homemade bread with real butter. Real bacon. “Hester,” Councilman Luthguster said,
“this is what coffee taste like.”

“Not my coffee,” said Hester.

“I know,” said the councilman.



“How do you like the breakfast?” Hank asked.

“Fine,” said Ensign Benson, though, in fact, it was all as ashes in his mouth. Looking up, he noticed the
designs painted high on the walls, just under the ceiling, 12 on each side, six along each end. Beginning at
the front left, three designs incorporated rams’ heads, three involved bulls, then…. “The zodiac,” Ensign
Benson said.

“You know it, then.” Hank Carpenter seemed pleased.

“Astronomy. Publius Nigidius Figulus wrote on astrology.”

“One of the great early scholars in the science.”

Ensign Benson raised such a skeptical brow. “Science?”

Hank offered such an indolent chuckle: “You’re from Earth, of course,” he said, “where it doesn’t
operate as efficiently.”

“Oh, really?”

“If you were to take an ordinary chemistry-lab experiment,” Hank suggested, “and try it under water, the
results wouldn’t please you. Would that disprove the science or reflect the surroundings?”

“So what makes this place better surroundings than Earth?”

“To begin with,” Hank said, “our being at the center of the universe means there's no distortion. Then,
our year is precisely three hundred sixty days long, so we don’t have to keep eternally adjusting things.
And Ptolemy’s system includes ten planets, and our planet has two moons and our sun; twelve. One
heavenly body per house.”

“Oh, but you can’t seriously----”

“As the bumblebee said to the physicist,” Hank said, “All I know is, it works.”



The extremely beautiful blond girl to Billy’s left said, “Hi, I’m Linda. What’s your sign?”

“Billy.”

“Billy? No, that’s your name. When were you born?”