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

holdup?"
"
The quarantine people." The collector shrugged. "We had to manufacture some
new excuse for every move we made, but I don't think they ever suspected anything.
And here you are!"
He dragged a heavy piece of primitive luggage into the room and straightened up
beside it, puffing and mopping at his broad wet face.
"Open it up," he wheezed. "You'll see that we intend to keep our part of the
bargain. Don't forget yours. "
The anthropoid dropped on his knees to burrow eagerly through the garments and
the simple paper documents in the bag. He looked up with a scowl.
"Where is it?" he snapped.
"You'll find everything," the fat man panted. "Your pardon papers. Ten thousand
dollars in currency. Forty thousand in cashier's checks. The clothing you
speci-fied—"
"
But where 's the gun?"
"Everything has been arranged so that you will never need it. " The collector shifted
on his feet uncomfortably. "I've been hoping you might change your mind about—
"I gotta protect myself."
"You'll never be attacked."
"
You said you'd give me a gun."
"
We did." The collector shrugged unhappily. "You may have it, if you insist, when
you leave the ship. Better get into your new clothing now. We want to take off again
in half an hour."
The yellow Cadillac convertible he had demanded was waiting in the dark at the
bottom of the ramp, its chrome trim shimmering faintly. The collector walked with
him down through the airlock to the car, and handed him a heavy little package.
"Now don't turn on the headlamps," the yellow man cautioned him. "Just wait here
for daylight. You'll see the Albuquerque highway then, not a mile east. Turn right to
Las Verdades. We have arranged everything to keep you very happy there, so long
as you don 't attempt to betray us. "
"Don't worry." He grinned in the dark. "Don't worry a minute."
He slid into the car and clicked on the parking lights. The instrument panel lit up
like a Christmas tree. He settled himself luxuriously at the wheel, appreciatively
sniffing the expensive new-car scents of leather and rub-ber and enamel.
"Don't you worry, butter-guts," he muttered. "You'll never know. "
The ramp was already lifting back into the interstellar ship when he looked up. The
bald man waved at him and vanished. The airlock thudded softly shut. The great
disk took off into the night, silently, like something falling upward.
The beast sat grinning in the car. Quite a deal, he was thinking. Everything he had
thought to ask for, all for just a couple of silly promises they couldn 't make him
keep. He already had most of his pay, and old clabber-guts would soon be forty
thousand miles away, or however far it was out to the stars.
Nobody had ever been so lucky.
They had fixed his teeth, and put him in a hundred-dollar suit, and stuffed his
pockets with good cigars. He unwrapped one of the cigars, bit off the end, lit it with
the automatic lighter, and inhaled luxuriously. He had everything.