"Anderson, Poul - 1964 Nicholas Van Rijn 02 - Trader to the Stars 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

"Beelzebub and botulism!" snarled Van Rijn. "He went
back Into hyper, ha? We see about that!" The ulcerated
converter shrieked as he called upon it, but the engines
were given power. On a lung and a half, the Terrestrial
ship again overtook the foreigner. Van Rijn phased in so
casually that Torrance almost forgot this was a job con-
sidered difficult by master pilots. He evaded a frantic pres-
sor beam and tied his yacht to the larger hull with un-
shearable bands of force. He cut off his hyperdrive again,
for the converter couldn't take much more. Being within
the force-field of the alien, the Hebe G.B. was carried
along, though the "drag" of extra mass reduced quasi-
speed considerably. If he had hoped the grappled vessel
would quit and revert to nl!rmal state, he was disappoin-
ted. The linked hulls continued plunging faster than light,
toward an unnamed constellation.
Torrance bit back an oath, summoned his men, and
went outside.
He had never forced entry on a hostile craft before, but
assumed it wasn't much different from burning his way
into a derelict. Having chosen his spot, he set up a balloon
tent to conserve air; no use killing the alien crew. The
torches of his men spewed flame; blue actinic sparks
fountained backward and danced through zero gravity.
Meanwhile the rest of the squad stood by with blasters
and grenades.
Beyond, the curves of the two hulls dropped off to infin-
ity. Without compensating electronic viewscreens, the sky
was weirdly distorted by aberration and Doppler effect, as
if the men were already dead and beating through the
other existence toward Judgment. Torrance held his mind
firmly to praCtical worries. Once inboard, the nonhumans
made prisoner, how was he to communicate? Especially
if he first had to gun down several of them.
The outer shell was peeled back. He studied the inner
structure of the plate with fascination. He'd never se
anything like it before. Surely this race had developed
space travel quite independently of mankind. Though
their engineering must obey the same natural laws, it
was radically different in detail. What was that tough
but corky substance lining the inner shell? And was the
circuitry embedded in it, for he didn't see any elsewhere?
The last defense gave way. Torrance swallowed hard and
shot a flashbeam into the interior. Darkness and vacuum
met him. When he entered the hull, he floated, weight-
less; artificial gravity had been turned off. The crew was
hiding someplace and . . .
And...
Torrance returned to the yacht in an hour. When he
came on the bridge, he found Van Rijn seated by Jed.