JК
Crashlander :: Нивен Ларри
Страница: 19 из 199For one long moment I stared into the three-foot tunnel, stopped in midair and already beginning to fall back, as I realized that there was nothing to hang on to. Then I stuck my hands in the tube and spread them against the sides. It was all I needed. I levered myself up and started to crawl.
The dictaphone was fifty feet below, utterly unreachable. If I had anything more to say to General Products, I'd have to say it in person. Maybe I'd get the chance. Because I knew what force was trying to tear the ship apart.
It was the tide.
* * *
The motor was off, and I was at the ship's midpoint. My spread-eagled position was getting uncomfortable. It was four minutes to perihelion.
Something creaked in the cabin below me. I couldn't see what it was, but I could clearly see a red point glaring among blue radial lines, like a lantern at the bottom of a well. To the sides, between the fusion tube and the tanks and other equipment, the blue stars glared at me with a light that was almost violet. I was aftaid to look too. long. I actually thought they might blind me.
There must have been hundreds of gravities in the cabin. I could even feel the pressure change. The air was thin at this height, one hundred fifty feet above the control room.
And now, almost suddenly, the red dot was more than a dot. My time was up. A red disk leapt up at me; the ship swung around me; I gasped and shut my eyes tight. Giants' hands gripped my arms and legs and head, gently but with great firmness, and tried to pull me in two. In that moment it came to me that Peter Laskin had died like this. He'd made the same guesses I had, and he'd tried to hide in the access tube. But he'd slipped … as I was slipping … From the control room came a multiple shriek of tearing metal. I tried to dig my feet into the hard tube walls. Somehow they held.
When I got my eyes open, the red dot was shrinking into nothing.
* * *
The puppeteer president insisted that I be put in a hospital for observation. I didn't fight the idea. My face and hands were flaming red, with blisters rising, and I ached as though I'd been beaten. Rest and tender loving care; that was what I wanted.
I was floating between a pair of sleeping plates, hideously uncomfortable, when the nurse came to announce a visitor. I knew who it was from her peculiar expression.
«What can get through a General Products bull?» I asked it.
«I hoped you would tell me.» The president rested on its single back leg, holding a stick thatg gave off green incense-smelling smoke.
«And so I will. Gravity.»
«Do not play with me, Beowulf Shaeffer. This matter is vital.
The dictaphone was fifty feet below, utterly unreachable. If I had anything more to say to General Products, I'd have to say it in person. Maybe I'd get the chance. Because I knew what force was trying to tear the ship apart.
It was the tide.
* * *
The motor was off, and I was at the ship's midpoint. My spread-eagled position was getting uncomfortable. It was four minutes to perihelion.
Something creaked in the cabin below me. I couldn't see what it was, but I could clearly see a red point glaring among blue radial lines, like a lantern at the bottom of a well. To the sides, between the fusion tube and the tanks and other equipment, the blue stars glared at me with a light that was almost violet. I was aftaid to look too. long. I actually thought they might blind me.
There must have been hundreds of gravities in the cabin. I could even feel the pressure change. The air was thin at this height, one hundred fifty feet above the control room.
And now, almost suddenly, the red dot was more than a dot. My time was up. A red disk leapt up at me; the ship swung around me; I gasped and shut my eyes tight. Giants' hands gripped my arms and legs and head, gently but with great firmness, and tried to pull me in two. In that moment it came to me that Peter Laskin had died like this. He'd made the same guesses I had, and he'd tried to hide in the access tube. But he'd slipped … as I was slipping … From the control room came a multiple shriek of tearing metal. I tried to dig my feet into the hard tube walls. Somehow they held.
When I got my eyes open, the red dot was shrinking into nothing.
* * *
The puppeteer president insisted that I be put in a hospital for observation. I didn't fight the idea. My face and hands were flaming red, with blisters rising, and I ached as though I'd been beaten. Rest and tender loving care; that was what I wanted.
I was floating between a pair of sleeping plates, hideously uncomfortable, when the nurse came to announce a visitor. I knew who it was from her peculiar expression.
«What can get through a General Products bull?» I asked it.
«I hoped you would tell me.» The president rested on its single back leg, holding a stick thatg gave off green incense-smelling smoke.
«And so I will. Gravity.»
«Do not play with me, Beowulf Shaeffer. This matter is vital.