"Gordon R. Dickson - The Forever Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

"All right, Mary," he said. "What was it you wanted to say
Frontier?"
There was a slight pause before the other's voice came back.
"Major-"
"Nevermind that," said Jim. "You had it right before,' let's
not go all formal now we're in space. I apologize for the
'Captain,' earlier. What was it you wanted, Mary?"
"All right, Jim," said the voice of Mary. "I won't bother
about military manners either, then." There was a slight grim-
ness to the humor in her voice. "I wanted to say-i'd like to
get in close enough to La Chasse Galierie, so that we can

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keep a tight-beam connection with her hull at all times and I
can record everything Penard says from the time of contact
on. It'll be important."
"Don't wonty," said Jim. "We're spread out and searching
on instruments for him now. If Picket Nine did a reasonable
job of calculating his progress, we should have him alongside
in a few minutes. And I'll put you right up next to him. We're
going to surround him with our ships, lock him in the middle
of us with magnetics, and try to shift out as a unit, since he
doesn't seem capable of anything more than regular accelera-
tion on his own."
"You say he'll be along?" said Mary. "Why didn't we go
direcdy to him?"
"And make it absolutely clear to the laaagi he's what we're
after?" answered Jim. "As long as they don't know for sure,
they have to assume we don't even know of his existence. So
we stop ahead in his line of travel-lucky he's just plugging
straight ahead without trying any dodges-and wait for him.
We might even make it lock like an accidental meeting to the
Laagi-" Jim smiled inside the privacy of his suit's headpiece
without much humor. "-But don't bet on it."
"Do you think you can lock on to him without too much
trouble-"
"Depends," answered Jim, "on how fast he starts shooting
at us when he sees us."
"Shooting at us?" There was incredulity in Mary's voice.
"Why should he-oh." Her voice dropped. "I see."
"That's right," said Jim. "We don't look like any human
ship he ever knew about, and he's in territory where he's
going to be expecting aliens, not friends."
"But what're you going to do, to stop him shooting?"
"They dug up the recognition signals of the Sixty Ships
Battle," said Jim. "Just pray he remembers them. And they've
given me a voice signal that my blinker lights can translate
and flash at him in the code he was working under at the time