"Blish, James - The Real Thrill" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blish James)

The officer shrugged and opened another door.
"Officer's quarters ?" asked Burrowes.
"Yep. My little home."
There was little to see but three bunks and a desk upon which lay some dusty
books and scattered, yellowed papers. The girl grunted and made for the door,
but Burrowes was attracted by the books. He picked them up one by one.
"See this," he said, holding up one marked Jet Propulsion Engines: Types and
Maintenance. "I wrote this one."
"Yeah?" The officer was more interested. "The captain had a lot of books in here
in the days before I took over. He had ambitions for being transferred to a
grav-boat, and he studied like fury. See--" He picked up several of the books.
"Mechanics of Achronic Fields. Geotron Operation and Repair. The Stasis Effect.
No use for those on a rocket ship."
"True enough," Martin agreed, while the girl squirmed impatienty. "The rest is
ordinary enough, though."
"Oh, the usual math tables, Barclay's Journal, Government orbits, takeoSs,
landings, the IP Yearbook of Hazards to Navigation and a million of the monthly
supplements to it--every ship carries those, gravboats included."
"Mar-tin," whined the girl. "Let's see somethin' else."
HE SIGHED and followed the offcer out. He shouldn't have come in here. It made
him too conscious of the days which should properly be forgotten. The great
metal shell seemed empty and dead. So far he had seen no one else on board
except the three of them.
"No crew?"
"Skeleton," the officer said over his shoulder. "Don't need many to fly this
boat, and it isn't going to be flown, anyhow. A few of the boys are down in the
engine compartment playing cards; my engineer is out on one of his periodic
binges. I don't blame him," he added bitterly.
They went down the central core to the end of the passage, where another metal
door admitted them to a balcony overlooking the engineroom. Below, four burly
toughs sat around a circle on the floor, each with a pile of matches before him.
Burrowes chuckled slightly to himself as he watched the girl pat her hair and
turn on her archest smile. He was more than conscious of his own rather flabby
construction, the poor condition into which he had allowed himself to slip with
the onset of despair and boredom.
The tube-men barely glanced at them, however, before going on with their game.
Evidently they were used to sight-seers, and had little respect for them.
Burrowes ran his eyes over the banks of tubes. They had seen heavy use at one
time; they were blue with heat-stain. He pointed.
"If you don't get number two cleaned out pretty soon you'll have
a back-blast."
The officer shrugged. "What's the difference? This boat won't see space again.
Let the stuff rot. The government's just using it to collect a little petty cash
before they melt it up for new ships." A red light began to wink on and off by
the door. "Excuse me a minute," he said. "Call coming in. Be right back." He
turned and ran back down the corridor.
The girl hung on Burrowes' arm.
"Martin," she said, "let's look around for ourselves, huh? Just a little look
around. I'll bet there's a lot of places he hasn't shown us."
Burrowes shook his head. "I don't think we'd better. We might get into trouble.