"Jack Williamson - The Happiest Creature" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williamson Jack)

JACK WILLIAMSON

If your father read science fiction, he very likely counted Jack Williamson high
among his favorite writers—as you very likely do today. Young enough to have
served with the Air Force in the South Pacific in World War II, Williamson is old
enough, and has been writing excellent science fiction stories often enough, to
have attained an almost unique status as combination revered old master and
bright new star. For more than thirty years his stories have been the delight of
hundreds of thousands of readers. Such consistent loyalty demonstrates the
existence of talent; such talent implies the ability to create so bright a bit as—

The Happiest Creature

The collector puffed angrily into the commandant's office in the quarantine
station, on the moon of Earth. He was a heavy hairless man with shrewd little
ice-green eyes sunk deep in fat yellow flesh. He had a genial smile when he was
getting what he wanted. Just now he wasn't.
"Here we've come a good hundred light-years, and you can see who I am." He
riffled his psionic identification films under the commandant's nose. "I intend to
collect at least one of those queer anthropoids, in spite of all your silly red tape."
The shimmering films attested his distinguished scien-tific attainments. He was
authorized to gather specimens for the greatest zoo in the inhabited galaxy, and the
quarantine service had been officially requested to expedite his search.
"I see." The commandant nodded respectfully, trying to conceal a weary frown.
The delicate business of safe guard-ing Earth's embryonic culture had taught him to
deal cau-tiously with such unexpected threats. "Your credentials are certainly
impressive, and we'll give you whatever help we can. Won't you sit down? "
The collector wouldn't sit down. He was thoroughly an-noyed with the
commandant. He doubted loudly that the quarantine regulations had ever been
intended to apply to such a backward planet as Earth, and he proposed to take his
specimen without any further fiddle-faddle.
The commandant, who came from a civilization which valued courtesy and
reserve, gasped in spite of himself at the terms that came through his psionic
translator, but he attempted to restrain his mounting impatience.
"Actually, these creatures are human," he answered firmly. "And we are stationed
here to protect them."
"Human?" The collector snorted. "When they 've never got even this far off their
stinking little planet!"
"A pretty degenerate lot," the commandant agreed re-gretfully. "But their human
origins have been well es-tablished, and you'll have to leave them alone."
The collector studied the commandant's stern-lipped face and modified his voice.
"
All we need is a single specimen, and we won 't injure that. " He recovered his jovial
smile. "On the contrary, the creature we pick up will be the luckiest one on the
planet. I've been in this game a good many centuries, and I know what I'm talking
about. Wild animals in their native en-vironments are invariably diseased. They are in
constant physical danger, generally undernourished, and always more or less
frustrated sexually. But the beast we take will receive the most expert attention in
every way."
A hearty chuckle shook his oily yellow yowls.