"Malcolm Beckett - Protectors" - читать интересную книгу автора (Beckett Malcolm)

PROTECTORS
by Malcolm Beckett


The title `Captain of the Protector-Service Striker *Crom*' was an impressive one. Albet Simps felt more like the Captain of an old-fashioned one-man submarine; a home-built one at that. There was no space for a Captain's cabin, in fact, no room for even a place that would be his alone to sit in. He was simply the monkey who was there to make sure the arrow got fired at roughly the right time, at roughly the right target.
He had not seen home in five years, and his skinny frame and slack, underworked muscles showed the effects of the condition of no-gravity in which he passed his existence when he was on patrol, as now. His short leaves in the Moon base of the Protector Service were refreshing in some senses, but he was never able to recover the health and vigor he had once felt, and had become sure in the past few years that his deteriorating health would not allow him to see Earth again. Not until he went there to be buried, at least. He could not remember why he had joined up, now. It sometimes seemed that the grey and white bulkheads of *Crom* were the only environment he had ever known, though he still knew better, somewhere deep inside him. He was Captain for this month. Willa would take over in three Earth days, and he was looking forward to being crew and purser and body-servant again for thirty days. She would require menial service of him, as she always did, but the terrible responsibility of the cargo they carried, and of its correct dispatch in emergency conditions, would be hers for a bit, and he could relax and be as dependent as his tension required him to be. Even now, he could feel the tug of his desire to be the doer of tasks rather than the decider. When they had last coupled, she had noticed it too, and had crowed a little at his premature sexual passivity. She would have tired of the subordinate role, of course, as, thirty-three days from now, would he, but her usurpation of the dominant role in `bed' had irritated him, although he had gone along with it.
For five long years; since the two of them had been paired by the Council committee responsible for such things, they had alternated between Captain and captive, and at first it had been exciting.
Now it sometimes felt like just one more chore, even when she aroused his sexual desire to heights he thought he had forgotten.
"Touch me there until I tell you to stop," she would command, and he would do so, and be relieved of the decision, and, for a month, or three weeks, that would be what he wanted.
Right now, he wanted to piss, but he had to track the missile he had just sent after the odd asteroid, or comet, or whatever it was. "Who ever heard of an bright silver asteroid?" asked Willa, from just behind his right ear.
He had no answer, so he just grunted. They were not supposed to assess the things they might destroy or deflect, just make sure they could never strike the Earth in pieces of any dangerous size. For all they knew, they could have blasted whole mines of desperately-needed raw materials to chunks the size of a fist, and never known it.
"Want to swap now, and relieve the tension a bit early?"
She always asked that, lately. She really wanted the Command role. She would be welcome to it soon, just a few days from now, but they both knew what would happen if he surrendered it now. She would have what she thought she wanted, but *Crom* would thenceforth have only one properly-functioning crew-member, and even she could react badly to the extra dominance that would give her.
Of course, she would acquire a new partner, and that would excite her, he was sure, but she might not be allowed to ship out with him. She, too, required the rules that governed the interchange of position, and might be crippled if he allowed her to alter it. Besides, it was against regs, and he and she were both wedded to regulations even more than to each other.
"Scratch my back," he ordered, and, automatically, she did, knowing the right spot to stimulate without being told.
"Now track the bird for a while," he told her, "I'm going below." He used pseudo-nautical terminology as often as he could, partly because it irritated Willa, and partly because it let him pretend he was somewhere on Earth with an unknown new woman, rather than out in the fringes of human-explored space with a flabby, skinny, wasted female version of himself, trying to pretend that he loved her when they fucked.
"Aye Captain," she responded, and she did her duty, though she stuck out her tongue as he headed for what he called the `head', and she called the `open-air mini-crapper', when she was in charge.
All functions were performed in the open in this vessel, for it was nothing but a huge, mobile missile-silo, with a small hamster-cage attached, and there was neither room nor any good technical reason for adding privacy facilities.
She was watching while he urinated, he was sure, and caught his thoughts just in time to avoid an erection at the idea.
Yes, he sighed inwardly, he was certainly ready to let her take over. He was wanting her to spy on him sexually, rather than the other way 'round, and that was another sign he recognized that he was not feeling like a Commander, or like any sort of dominant person at all.
"How's she flying?" he called up the tube-corridor to her.
"Straight, at least. Maybe on target, too. We'll know if it'll strike in...about fifteen minutes, I think.
"Put Tracking on Auto, and come to bed." He tried to put a note of tough command in his voice, because sometimes she like that, but he was really pleading to be held, and loved, and comforted, and she would know it, and be less loving than she could, just to assert her coming dominance. Maybe retirement would be possible after the next sortie, and he'd never have to look at her or touch her or need her again.
He headed for the sack they called their bed, and was surprised to find himself eager, after all these times.
Willa Mant left her post slowly. She was not at all eager to be submissive today, but she had to. Regulations. Three days from now, he'd be her slave, if she wanted, and that was stimulating enough to make her at least undress on the way.
The switch was long overdue, this time, she thought, as she assumed the position she thought he would like. Next time, or the time after that, she'd make him beg before she gave in to the pig.
And the two loneliest people in the worlds or out of them managed to find some comfort in each other after all. And perhaps some love as well.
The bird flew true this time. It was aimed for the dusty- silver object that was, in fact, on collision-course with Earth, and its automatic guidance was not so rusty that it would throw it completely off course, as had happened to *Crom*'s sister- vessel, *Vengeance,* only last year. But the course-correcting rockets were old, too, and the course of the huge weapon deviated just a trifle from the pattern the computer on Earth had laid down for it. The strike was off-center. Never mind, the thing's new course had deviated enough that most of the mathematicians and astronomers of the Protection Intelligence Committee thought it would eventually strike the Sun, or at least be captured in an inner-System orbit.
The bright silver stuff must have been a film of some sort, the bright heads of Humanity decided, because the thing was much smaller now, and looked dusty-black on the final closeup photos taken by a reconnaissance flyby two months later.
Two years after that, the silver covering had reappeared, and the last time the Preventive Service had an official look at the thing, they thought they must have erred in their original calculation of its new orbit, for it was locked into a satellite configuration with Venus. The Solar System now had two planets with single Moons. Nobody paid that very much attention, though.

There were always new threats, real or potential, to be avoided, and what went on at Venus was just too expensive to investigate.
Mating was more of a struggle than joyful play. Over quickly, it was the sudden eruption of lust in two rather testy mink, rather than a loving human expression of love or lust. A reflex act, performed in weightlessness as part of the dominance- submission cycle that Command loved too much to examine very closely. It worked, they said. By that they usually meant that it kept the bright young officers out in space until they burned out, and were no threat to those above them on the ladder.
Willa and Albet had been exceptional. They still might be, but they were locked into a rigorous alternation of roles that neither could see for long enough to break it.
"You got that funny asteroid in the 'scope?"
"Yes." Her reply was slow, almost lazy. Three days to changeover. He'd better assert himself. If he lost the Captaincy to her now, they'd be ruined as a team.
He shot down the short tube of the crew-pod, landing with grace he did not know he had on the worn pad at the end, and deflected his course in to the little space they called "Navigation," or, "The Observatory," depending on what they were doing in there at the time.
"Brace, crewman!"
She swam slowly into a position that somewhat resembled an "at attention" stance. Or would have had she been doing anything but vomiting.
"Oh, shit, Willa, I'm sorry...." Albet grabbed a double- handful of her sick-soaked suit, and eased her into the "corridor," and thence to the sack.
"You been like this for long, Baby?"
"Thirty years, more or less." The effect of her sarcasm was lost in a second spew that splashed off Albet. He barely noticed.
"All right. Settle if you can. I'll get the medikit."
"What you gonna treat me for? Got a diagnosis, Doc?"
His temper broke for just a second, and he found himself at her throat, quite literally. Slowly, carefully, he forced himself away from her, slid out into the corridor and broke open the hatch behind which they kept their pitiful supply of medicaments.
There was stuff for pain, stuff for infection, stuff for allergies to the other stuff, but he found nothing at all for nausea.
"Nothing here!" he bellowed.
Weakly; "No. I used it already."
He returned to her side. "How much? How long?"
"Long time. I spit blood once, but that was over a month ago. Albet, what the hell do you care?"