"Gordon Dickson & Harry Harrision - Lifeship Lp Ebook Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

Gordon Dickson & Harry Harrision - Lifeship

The explosion drummed and shuddered all through the fabric of the Albenareth spaceship, just as Giles reached the foot of the ladder leading up from the baggage area into passenger territory. He grabbed the railing of the spiral staircase that was the ladder and hung on. But almost on the heels of the Erst tremor came an unexpected second explosion that tore him loose and threw him against the further wall of the corridor, smashing him into the metal surface.

Stunned, he stumbled back to his feet. He began to pull himself up the staircase as fast as he could, gaining speed as he went. His mind cleared. He could not have been unconscious for more than a few seconds, he thought. At the top of the stairs he turned hastily back down an upper corridor toward the stem and his own stateroom. But this wider, passenger corridor was already filling with obstacles in the shape of bewildered, small, gray-suited men and womenЧarbites indent to Belben; and abruptly the loud and terrible moaning of an emergency, ship-out-of-control signal erupted into life and continued without pause. Already the atmosphere of the corridor had the acrid taste of smoke, and there were cries to him for help from the half-seen figures of the arbites.

The incredible was happening. Below them and around them all, the great spaceship had evidently caught fire from the two

explosions, and was now helpless, a brief new star falling through the endless distances of interstellar space. Spaceships were not supposed to bum, especially the massive vessels of the Albenareth Чbut this one was doing so.

A coldness began to form in the pit of Giles' stomach; for the air around him was already warming and now beginning to haze with the smoke, and the sounds of arbite terror he heard tore at his conscience like sharp and jagged icicles.

He fought off his ingrained response toward the frightened indentees around him, walling it off, surrounding it with his own fury. He had a job to do, a duty to finish. That came first, before anyone or anything. The arbites aboard were not his direct responsibility. He began to run, dodging the hands of the reaching figures that loomed up through the smoke ahead of him, brushing them aside, now and then hurdling a fallen one who could not be

sidestepped.

And all the while around the cold core in him, his fury grew. He put on speed. Now there was occasional debris in the corridor;

here and there, panels in the walls, glimpsed through the smoke, sagged away from him like sheets of melting wax. None of this should be happening. There was no reason for wholesale disaster. But he had no time now to figure out what had gone wrong. The moans and cries of the arbite passengers still tore at him, but he plunged on.

A darker, narrower-than-human figure loomed suddenly out of the smoke before him. A long, oddly boned hand, a threefingered hand, caught his bright-orange shipsuit and held him.

"To a lifeshipl" brayed the Albenareth crewman, almost buzzing the human words. "Turn about. Go forward! Not to the

stern."

Giles checked his instinct to surge against the restraining hand. He was large and powerful, stronger by far than any arbite, except those bred and trained to special uses; but he knew better than to try to pull loose from the apparently skinny fingers holding him.

"My Honor!" he shouted at the alien, using the first words he could think of to which an Albenareth mind might respond. "Duty Чmy obligation! I'm SteelЧGiles Steel Ashad, an Adelman! The only Adelman aboard heie. Don't you recognize me?"

The alien and he were trapped in a moment of motionlessness. The dark, lipless, narrow face stared into his from inches away. Then the hand of the Albenareth let go and the alien mouth opened in the dry cackling laughter that meant many things, but not humor.

"Go!" said the crewman. Giles turned and ran on.

Just a little farther brought him to the door of his suite. The metal handle burned his fingers and he let go. He kicked the door with a grunt of effort, and it burst open. Within, the bitter taste of thick smoke took him solidly by the throat.

He groped his way to his travel bag, jerked it open, and pulled out the metal box inside it. Coughing, he punched out the combination, and the lock of the box let go, the lid sprang open. Hastily he pawed through the mass of papers within. His fingers closed on the warrant for extradition, crammed it into a suit pocket, and dipped down to rip open the destruct trigger that would incinerate the box with all the rest of its contents. A whitehot flare shot up before him and the metal frame of the container collapsed like melting ice. He turned, hesitated, and pulled tools from inside his shipsuit. He had meant to hide these carefully, once his job was done; but there was no point in hiding anything now. Still coughing, he tossed the tools into the heat of the stillflaring container, turned, and plunged once more into the clearer air of the corridor, heading back finally toward the bow of the vessel and the particular lifeship he had been assigned to.

The Albenareth crewman was gone from his post when Giles passed that point again. Under the ceiling lights, the corridor was misty with smoke, but free now even of the figures of arbites. A small hope flickered in him. Perhaps someone else had taken charge of them by this time. He ran on. He was almost to the lifeship. There were voices in conversation just aheadЧthen some-

thing large and dark seemed to flicker up in front of him, out of nowhere, and something else that felt like a giant flyswatter slapped him from his feet- He was momentarily staggered, but recovering even as he fell backward to the soft surface of the corridor. His head clearing, he lay for a second fighting to stay conscious. Now that he was down where the smoke was thinner, he could see that he had run into a door someone had left standing open. As he lay there, he heard two arbite voicesЧone male, one young and femaleЧtalking.

"You heard that? The ship's breaking up," the man said.

"There's no point our waiting out here now. The lifeship's just down that short hall. Let's go."

"No, Mara. Wait... we were supposed to wait..." The

man's voice trailed off.