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

"Our area of space." said Mollen's voice, out of the dimness around the table. "-And the Laagi's, Mary.
They block our expansion in that direction, and we block theirs in this. The distribution of the stars in
this view being what it is, it's not practical for either race to go around the other. You see the Frontier
area, Mary?"
"Where the two corne together, yes," said Mary.
"Now Jim-" said Mollen. "Jim commands a Wing of our Frontier Guard ships, and he knows that area
well. But nothing but unmanned drones of ours have ever gotten deep into Laagi territory beyond the
Frontier and come back out again. Agreed, Jim?"
Agreed, sir," said Jim. "More than twenty, thirty lightyears deep is suicide."
"Well, perhaps," said Mollen. "But let me go on. The Sixty Ships Battle wits fought a hundred and
twelve years ago-here." A bright point of light sprang into existence in the Frontier area. "One of the
ships engaged in it was a oneman vessel with a s-.mianimate automatic control system, named by its
pilot La Chasse Gallerie-you said something, Jim?"
The exclamation had emerged from Jim's lips involuntarily. And at the same time, foolishly, a slight
shiver had run down his back. It had been years since he had tun across the old tale as a boy.
"It's a French-Canadian ghost legend, sir," he said. "The legend was that voyageurs who had left their
homes in Eastern Canada to go out on the fur trade routes and who had died out there would be able to
come back home one night of the year. New Year's night. They'd come sailing in through the storms and
snow in ghost canoes, to join the people back home and kiss the girls they now wouldn't ever be seeing
again. -That's what they called the story, `La Chasse Gallerie.' It means the hunting of a type of butterfly
that invades beehives to steal honey."
"The pilot of this ship was a Canadian," said Mollen. "Raoul Penard." He coughed dryly. "He was
greatly attached to his home. La Chasse Gallerie was one of the ships near the

THE FOREVER MAN / 7
center of the nova explosion, one of the ones that disappeared. At that time we didn't realize that the
nova explosion was merely a destructive application of the principle used in phase-shift drive. -You've
heard of the statistical chance that a ship caught just right by a nova explosion could be transported
instead of destroyed, Jim?"
"I'd hate to count on it, sir," said Jim. "Anyway, what's the difference? Modern ships can't be anticipated
or held still long enough for any kind of explosion to be effective. The Laagi haven't used the nova for
eighty years. Neither have we."
"True enough," said Mollen. "But we aren't talking about modern ships. Look at the desk schema, Jim.
Forty-three hours ago, one of our deep, unmanned probes returned from far into Laagi territory with
pictures of a ship. Look."
Jim heard a stud click. The stars shifted and drew back. Floating against a backdrop of unknown stars he
saw the oldfashioned cone shape of a one-man space battlecraft, of a type forgotten eighty years before.
The view moved in close and he saw a name, abraded by dust and dimmed, but readable on the hull.

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La Chasse Gallerie-The breath caught in his throat.
"It's been floating around in Laagi territory all this time?" Jim said. "I can't believe-"
"More than that"-Mollen interrupted him= `that ship's under pilotage and moving." A stud clicked. The
original scene came back. A bright line began at the extreme edge of the desk and began to creep toward
the back limits of Laagi territory. It entered the territory and began to pass through.
"You see," said Mollen's voice out of the dimness, "it's coming back from wherever the nova explosion
kicked it to, over one hundred years ago. It's headed back toward our own territory. It's headed back,
toward Earth."