"Gordon R. Dickson & Harry Harrision - Lifeship" - 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 womenтАФarbites 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 тАФbut 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