JК
Crashlander :: Нивен Ларри
Страница: 194 из 199I tookmy shirt off. My blood was suffused with the antisunburn chemicals, and my skin darkened fast as the morning wore on.
We flew not far above the water. Following the surfaces of enormous swells, Wyvern felt a long-period surge and drop. This was the deep ocean. Waves had room to grow out here. So did the sea beasts.
A voice from the control room directed our eyes to where a black shadow was forming in the dark water. It surfaced; water ran from it, a black island. Then a neck rose, and rose farther, dozens of yards into the air. A bar of a head with eyes wide-spaced for binocular vision studied the lights of the flying machine above it.
I felt the heady ecstasy of the discoverer and then a sudden savage guilt.
We would end on Home.
A flat phobe could live and raise her children there without forcing her body to admit that she had left Earth. In that respect it lacks interest, and that was why we chose it. I would be there, too, marooned beneath the stars … at the bottom of a hole, as the Belters say of planets.
I didn't even know if there were alien embassies on Home. «I'm out of the aliens business,» I'd said.
I'd been on Fafnir for a year and a half, and I'd spent it beneath the ocean. This was my last chance to see the world. My last spaceflight, in miniature.
It's misdirection, see, Sharrol? The crashlander's hand is more nimble than the eye of the ARM. But I'd known what I was doing all along.
Sanity check –
Ander wouldn't ignore the spaceports; Ander wouldn't forget the iceliners. I had to gamble that he had looked at Outbound Enterprises first, and thoroughly, before he had come to Pacifica. Sharrol and Jeena and I might get clear before Ander looked again.
Then the records would tell him that a family native to Fafnir had been frozen while, halfway around the planet, Ander was watching water war with Beowulf Shaeffer. He would have no reason at all to connect these Graynors with fleeing flatlanders.
I was not burning time at my family's cost. I was confusing my back trail. With luck and ingenuity we'd be clear of Ander Smittarasheed and would stay that way.
Now, what of Sigmund Ausfaller?
They had followed us to Fafnir by following the track of Carlos's ship, but Fafnir wasn't even the best bet. Flat phobes would try to reach Home. My best guess was that Sigmund had sent Ander here and taken Home for himself.
I would wake from the frozen state, and Sigmund Ausfaller would be looking down at me.
We flew not far above the water. Following the surfaces of enormous swells, Wyvern felt a long-period surge and drop. This was the deep ocean. Waves had room to grow out here. So did the sea beasts.
A voice from the control room directed our eyes to where a black shadow was forming in the dark water. It surfaced; water ran from it, a black island. Then a neck rose, and rose farther, dozens of yards into the air. A bar of a head with eyes wide-spaced for binocular vision studied the lights of the flying machine above it.
I felt the heady ecstasy of the discoverer and then a sudden savage guilt.
We would end on Home.
A flat phobe could live and raise her children there without forcing her body to admit that she had left Earth. In that respect it lacks interest, and that was why we chose it. I would be there, too, marooned beneath the stars … at the bottom of a hole, as the Belters say of planets.
I didn't even know if there were alien embassies on Home. «I'm out of the aliens business,» I'd said.
I'd been on Fafnir for a year and a half, and I'd spent it beneath the ocean. This was my last chance to see the world. My last spaceflight, in miniature.
It's misdirection, see, Sharrol? The crashlander's hand is more nimble than the eye of the ARM. But I'd known what I was doing all along.
Sanity check –
Ander wouldn't ignore the spaceports; Ander wouldn't forget the iceliners. I had to gamble that he had looked at Outbound Enterprises first, and thoroughly, before he had come to Pacifica. Sharrol and Jeena and I might get clear before Ander looked again.
Then the records would tell him that a family native to Fafnir had been frozen while, halfway around the planet, Ander was watching water war with Beowulf Shaeffer. He would have no reason at all to connect these Graynors with fleeing flatlanders.
I was not burning time at my family's cost. I was confusing my back trail. With luck and ingenuity we'd be clear of Ander Smittarasheed and would stay that way.
Now, what of Sigmund Ausfaller?
They had followed us to Fafnir by following the track of Carlos's ship, but Fafnir wasn't even the best bet. Flat phobes would try to reach Home. My best guess was that Sigmund had sent Ander here and taken Home for himself.
I would wake from the frozen state, and Sigmund Ausfaller would be looking down at me.