The Coming of the Quantum Cats (Frederik Pohl) читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги (ч. 29)

At this hour of the night the big underground parking garage was deserted, and the lawyer wished he hadn't worked so late as he tried to remember where he'd left his car. You never could find a policeman when you needed one! He felt he needed one now—two rapes, a murder, nobody knew how many mugg'ings in the garage in the past few months. Then he rounded a corner and saw two uniformed men patrolling, with tommy guns slung over their shoulders. "Good evening," he said, feeling better at once—until he observed that their uniforms were gray-green shoulderboarded things, with forage caps quite unlike the checkerboarded ones of the Chicago police force. Worse, when they challenged him he recognized the language. Russian! Instinctively, he turned and ran, his shoulder blades crawling. He heard a burst of shots, but no bullet struck him. And when, stuck at a dead end, he turned, sobbing, to confront them, they were gone.