putterings 322 < 323 > 324 index
pois nāo?
“Then how about the machine-shop? I couldn’t do any harm there.”
Zuloaga wagged a forefinger. “Oh, you Americanos do Norte all want to get your hands greasy as soon as you come aboard. It must give you a feeling of virility, pois nāo? But come, you shall see our little shop.”
In the shop Chapman cultivated the acquaintance of Chief Machinist Gustafson. Zuloaga left them puttering among the tools. When Chapman departed a quarter-hour later, he took with him a lump of beeswax and a length of wire which he had slipped into his pockets unseen...
—
ex A.D. 2104-2128 “Summer Wear,” in L. Sprague de Camp. The Continent Makers, and Other Tales of the Viagens (1953; Signet Science Fiction Q4825, 1971) : 36
borrowable at archive.org : link
from back cover —
“By the twenty-first century, the great power struggle on Earth has been resolved in the only possible way. The United States, Russia, and China all have fallen by the wayside, and Brazil has assumed her rightful place as world leader. Thus it is naturally Brazil that conducts the first interstellar explorations, and creates the great space transport system, the Viagens Interplanetarias, to extend her galactic conquests and hold her vast and growing empire together...”
- L. Sprague de Camp (1907-2000)
wikipedia : link - “The Viagens Interplanetarias series is a sequence of science fiction stories by L. Sprague de Camp, begun in the late 1940s... Set in the future in the 21st and 22nd centuries, the series is named for the quasi-public Terran agency portrayed as monopolizing interstellar travel, the Brazilian-dominated Viagens Interplanetarias (‘Interplanetary Voyages’ or ‘Interplanetary Tours’ in Portuguese).”
wikipedia : link - “Summer Wear”
wikipedia : link (includes plot summary)