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

He ceded to accomplish something and find someone who understood what it was like to have that need.
He got up and started getting himself ready for duty.
When he was finally dressed, he strapped on last of all his "personals"-his sidearm, the painkiller kit, the
little green thumbnailsquare box holding the x-capsule. Then he left his room, went down the long,
sleeping corridor of the officers'

THE FOREVER MAN / 3
quarters and out a side door into the darkness of predawn and the rain.
He could have gone around by the interior corridors to the Operations building, but it was a short cut
across the quadrangle and the rain and chill would wake him, drive the last longing for sleep from his
bones. As he stepped out of the door the invisible rain, driven by a light wind, hit him in the face.
Beyond were the blurred lights of the Operations building across the quadrangle.
Far off to his left thunder rolled. Tinny thunder-the kind heard at high altitudes, in the mountains.
Beyond the rain and darkness were the Rockies. Above the Rockies, the clouds. And beyond the clouds,
space, stretching light-years of distance to the Frontier.
-To where he would doubtless be before the dawn rose, above this quadrangle, above these buildings,
these mountains, and this Earth.
He entered the Operations building, showed his identification to the Officer of the Day, and took the lift
tube up to the fourth floor. The frosted pane of the door to Conference Room F glowed with a brisk,
interior light. He knocked on the door and went in without waiting for an answer. Inside, the room was
half-full of pilots like himself and their gunners.
"Oh, Jim!" said the colonel behind the briefing desk. "Not here. They want you in Conference Room K,
this time."
Jim grunted. He had forgotten. He went out. One floor down and halfway down the corridor to the right
was Conference K. Jim went in this time without even knocking-and stopped. Like all conference rooms
in Operations, it had one desk and many chairs. This room also had two people, one of whom was
General Louis Mollen, Sub-Chief of Operations, and the other was a woman Jim did not know.
Mollen, round and hard-bodied as a medicine ball, with a head to match, sat behind the desk; and in a
chair half-facing him was a woman in military flight clothes, in her midtwenties,lean and
highforeheaded, with the fresh skin and clear eyes of someone who has spent most of her years inside
walls, sheltered from the weather. Under reddish blond hair her eyes were blue-green, in a face that was
rectangular, with the jawlines sloping straight down to a small, square chin. It was not

4 / Gordon R. Dickson
a remarkable face. Nor was it unremarkable. It was a strong, determined face.
"Sony, sir. I should have knocked," said Jim.
"Not important," said Mollen. "Come in."
Jim came in and both the other two stood up as he approached the desk. They watched him closely, and
Jim found himself examining the woman. The flight coveralls she wore had been fitted to her, which
meant she was not just a civilian fitted out by the -supply depot for this occasion. At the same time
something about her did not belong in the Operations building; and Jim, out of the dullness of the fatigue
that was still on him and the emptiness in him, found himself twinged by a sudden and reasonless
resentment at her presence here, at the moment of a scramble. She looked unnaturally wideawake and

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competent for this dark hour of the morning. Of course, so did Mollen; but that was different.
Jim stopped in front of the desk.