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Robert A. Heinlein - Common Sense
Atec Февраль 27 2008 22:54:42
Книга только для ознакомления
. Hear me?"
Forty-one was struck speechless. No one ever talked back to the Mother of Blades; the Boss was certainly a man of power!
The knifemaker suddenly cracked. "But that's not the right way to make knives," she complained shrilly. "They wouldn't balance right. I'll show you." She snatched up two braces of knives from her workbench and let fly at a cross-shaped target across the room -- not in succession, but all four arms swinging together, all four blades in the air at once. They spwiged into the target, a blade at the extreme end of each arm of the cross. "See? You couldn't do that with a long knife. It would fight with itself and not go straight."
"Boss--" Forty-one tried again. Joe-Jim handed him a mouthful of knuckles without looking around.
"I see your point," Jim told the knifemaker, "but we don't want these knives for throwing. We want them for cutting and stabbing up close. Get on with it; I want to see the first one before you eat again."
The old woman bit her lip. "Do I get my usuals?" she said sharply.
"Certainly you get your usuals," he assured her. "A tithe on every kill till the blades are paid for, and good eating all the time you work."
She shrugged her misshapen shoulders. "O.K." She turned, tonged up a long flat fragment of steel with her two left hands and clanged the stock into the furnace. Joe-Jim turned to Forty-one.
"What is it?" Joe asked
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