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

comes along, one in billions of people, who isn't just one notch up from the next contenders, but ten
notches up from the nearest best. There's no point in sending you and five ships into Laagi

THE FOREVER MAN / 11
territory with anyone else in command. You simply wouldn't come back. With Jim, you might."
"I see," said Mary. She looked at Jim. "Regardless, I'm going."
"And you're taking her, Jim," said Mollen, "or turning down the mission."
"And if I turn it down?" Jim darted a glance at the general.
"I'll answer that," said Mary. Jim looked back at her. "If necessary, my Bureau will requisition a ship
and I'll go alone."
Jim stared back at her for a long moment, and felt the rage drain slowly away from him, to be replaced
by a great weariness.
"All right," he said. "All right, Mary-General. I'll head the mission." He breathed deeply and glanced
over Mary's coveralls. "How long'll it take you to get ready?"
"I'm ready now," said Mary. She reached down to the floor behind the desk and came up with a package
of personalssidearm, med-kit and x-box. "The sooner the better."
"All right. The five ships of the Section are manned and waiting for you," said Mollen. He stood up
behind the desk and the other two got to their feet facing him. "I'll walk down to Transmission Section
with you."




CHAPTER

2
THEY WENT OUT TOGETHER INTO THE CORRIDOR AND ALONG IT
and down an elevator tube to a tunnel with a moving floorway.
They stepped onto the gently rolling strip, which carried them

file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Gordon%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Forever%20Man.txt (7 of 245)16-2-2006 21:31:50
 file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Gordon%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Forever%20Man.txt

forward onto a slightly faster strip, and then to a faster, and so
Fon until they were flashing down the tunnel surrounded by air
pumped at a hundred and twenty miles an hour in the same
direction they traveled, so that they would not he blown off
their feet. In a few minutes they came to the end, and air and
strips decelerated so that they slowed and stepped at last into
what looked like an ordinary office, but which was deep in the
heart of a mountain. -This, the memory returned to Jim, in
case the Transmission Section blew up on one of its attempts
to transmit. The statistical chance was always there. Perhaps,
this time...?
Mollen had cleared them with the officer of the duty guard
~and they were moving on through other rooms to the suiting
room, where Jim and Mary climbed into the unbelievably bar-
rel-bodied space suits that were actually small spaceships in
~themselves and in which-if they who wore them were un-
and still would not take their x-pills-they might drift