"Anderson, Poul - Explorationsl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

Whereas-Very well, keep silence, let her get that adieu out of her system. Afterward-

"You find this a bonny land, do you not?" I asked rhetorically.

She nodded. "I'll never forget," she murmured.

"You need not hanker," I told her. "When we return to Earth-" My heart slammed. "We can come here. Whenever we're both free. No matter money. I draw a good wage, and nobody depends on me anymore."

"Oh, Alec!" For an instant I glimpsed tears. For another instant her arms were around me, her face buried in my shoulder. Then she leaped up. "C'mon, lazylegs!" she cried, and we were on our way again.

We made rendezvous beyond Mars, where Uriel had lately been flying a prearranged exact circle. Knowing position and quasispeed of the exiles, my instruments, automatons, and I brought Gabriel carefully closing in. When the two counterinertial fields, extending a few kilometers beyond either hull, began to mesh, I saw ghostlike waverings across the Milky Way. As we neared, our objective solidified. Having reached the same phase, an optic screen showed it not far off, as real among the stars as we were ... or as unreal, in this mass-annulled condition we shared.

"Synchronism achieved," I mumbled into the intercom, and sank back in my pilot chair. The process had been slow, trying, dangerous because of the short range within which mutual detection was possible; inside our fields, we still had inertia with respect to each other if not to the outside cosmos, and a collision would wreck us both. I smelled the sweat rank on me, heard breath and pulse rattle, felt the separate stiffnesses and aches in a body no longer young.

"How are they?" rang Daphne's voice. "May we see?"

I decided I wasn't ready for the boneyard yet, and switched the telereceivers aft into the visual compensator circuit. A buzz of excited talk reached me vaguely, from my men. They were five altogether besides her, excellent fellows, who had treated her with awkward chivalry while we rehearsed and at last ran outward from Earth orbit. I wish them well. But none of them especially matters.

"Maintain stations," I ordered. "I'll try for contact." Right off, I saw my mistake. "I'll make contact," I amended. They must not be dead or insane over there! My fingers stumbled across the com panel. "Gabriel to Uriel, come in."

"Uriel to Gabriel." The screen flashed color. Matt King stared forth. His eyes and cheeks were sunken back among the bones of his face, and he spoke in a hoarse whisper; but he was clean, closely groomed, crisply uniformed. My worst fears drained out of me. "Welcome, welcome." He managed a shaky smile. "You're skippering the mission, are you, Alexander Sinclair, you old rascal? What a pleasant surprise."

"How is everybody?" I barked.

"Basically healthy, praise God. Weak but functional, and we got out of the habit of hunger six months ago. Morale is, um, not bad. We do hope you've brought steaks and champagne! When do you expect you can board?"

"We need rest, and I want a complete final checkout of every system ... Let's say in twenty-four hours. I'm sorry it cannot be sooner. Uh, I wonder if Valdemar Asklund could come to your pickup?"

"Why, well, yes, if you wish."

"Will you report to the command bridge?" I said into the intercom. No reason to state who.

She arrived just as Asklund's hollowed-out countenance appeared. Through a minute or more, they were dumb. I might not leave my post until relieved by Roberts, my first officer; but I glowered at the optic screens. In one of them, its radiance stopped down for the sake of my vision, the sun looked shrunken and cold; in another, Earth shone deep blue, loveliest of the stars and somehow more distant-seeming than any else; in the rest gleamed inhuman hordes and the immensities between.

Finally I heard Asklund sigh, "Daphne, why?"

"To be with you," she wept.

"When we can't even touch? I... we're going away as soon as-Oh, my dearest, I worked for weeks on a message to record for you, and now- no words-" I heard him weep too.

Presently she said, "I'll be busy, you realize. I'm responsible for the core parts of your food-cycling equipment. But you can assit me, and-and Captain Sinclair did promise we'd have chances, a compartment where we're by ourselves, or a private line-" To talk.

We used no gang tube. A handful of air molecules, diffusing from Uriel to Gabriel, would bring the same doom on us. Instead, we kept the ships as far apart as synchronicity allowed, and jetted across in spacesuits which we wore during an entire shift. This handicapped us infernally. Sheer bulk got in its own way. Gloved fingers, being clumsy, must often operate specially designed manipulators. Speech was via sonic amplifiers, likewise a nuisance. But there was no help for it; and, to be sure, as we instructed them in the requirements, our outcast comrades became quite skillful teammates. Returning to our vessel to eat and sleep, we paused outside the entry lock and practiced elaborate rotations and contortions while an infrared beam boiled off whatever atoms might cling to our suits, and well-nigh baked us. Those were the more obvious - physical discomforts.

And they were not what made us long to finish and be gone. No, it was what Uriel's men said, generally with Spartan mildness, and their eyes upon us, and the way they handled the letters, pictures, tapes, mementos we brought them.

I remember a talk out of many which King and I had. We were off duty, seated in our cabins, using an exclusive frequency. This is standard on spacecraft, whose captains may have to reach a grim decision. We let Daphne and her husband into these cubicles at a regular hour out of the twenty-four.

King poured whiskey from a bottle, my smuggled gift, raised the tumbler, and toasted. "Here's to our noble selves." I responded in kind. He didn't show it, really-indeed, having begun to flesh out since we brought abundant food, he looked better than erstwhile-but he had let himself become a trifle drunk.