"Gordon R. Dickson - Hilifter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

before hammering on the locked door and calling for someone to let him
out. Cully had been forced to sit digesting the matter in silence.
At the thought of it now, however, he grinned again. That steward was a
regular prize package. Cully must remember to think up something
appropriate for him, afterward. At the moment, there were more pressing
things to think of.
Cully looked in the mirror again and was relieved at the sight of himself
without the betraying grin. The face that looked back at him at the moment
was lean and angular. A little peroxide solution on his thick, straight brows
had taken the sharp appearance off his high cheekbones and given his pale
blue eyes a faintly innocent expression. When he really wanted to fail to
impress sharply discerning eyes, he also made it a point to chew gum.
The present situation, he considered now, did not call for that extra touch.
If the steward was already even vaguely suspicious of him, he could not
wait around for an ideal opportunity. He would have to get busy now, while
they were still working the spaceship out of the solar system to a safe
distance where the overdrive could be engaged without risking a
mass-proximity explosion.
And this, since he was imprisoned so neatly in own shoebox of a cabin,
promised to be a problem right from the start.


He looked around the cabin. Unlike the salon cabins on the level
overhead, where it was possible to pull down the bed and still have a tiny
space to stand upright in тАУ either beside the bed, in the case of single-bed
cabins, or between them, in the case of doubles тАУ in the tourist cabins once
the bed was down, the room was completely divided into two spaces тАУ the
space above the bed and the space below. In the space above, with him,
were the light and temperature and ventilation controls, controls to provide
him with soft music or the latest adventure tape, food and drink dispensers
and a host of other minor comforts.
There were also a phone and a signal button, both connected with the
steward's office. Thoughtfully he tried both. There was, of course, no
answer.
At that moment a red light flashed on the wall opposite him; and a voice
came out of the grille that usually provided the soft music.
"We are about to maneuver. This is the Captain's Section, speaking. We
are about to maneuver. Will all lounge passengers return to their cabins?
Will all passengers remain in their cabins, and fasten seat belts. We are
about to maneuver. This is the Captain's Section тАУ"
Cully stopped listening. The steward would have known this
announcement was coming. It meant that everybody but crew members
would be in their cabins, and crew members would be up top in control
level at maneuver posts. And that meant nobody was likely to happen along
to let Cully out. If Cully could get out of this cabin, however, those
abandoned corridors could be a break for him.
However, as he looked about him now, Cully was rapidly revising
downward his first cheerful assumption that he тАУ who had gotten out of so
many much more intentional prisons тАУ would find this a relatively easy task.
On the same principle that a pit with unclimbable walls and too deep to