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

Gordon R. Dickson & Harry Harrison

1

The explosion drummed and shuddered all through the fabric
of the Albenareth spaceship, just as Giles reached the foot of the
ladder leading up from the baggage area into passenger territory.
He grabbed the railing of the spiral staircase that was the ladder
and hung on. But almost on the heels of the Erst tremor came an
unexpected second explosion that tore him loose and threw him
against the further wall of the corridor, smashing him into the
metal surface.

Stunned, he stumbled back to his feet. He began to pull him-
self up the staircase as fast as he could, gaining speed as he went.
His mind cleared. He could not have been unconscious for more
than a few seconds, he thought. At the top of the stairs he turned
hastily back down an upper corridor toward the stem and his own
stateroom. But this wider, passenger corridor was already filling
with obstacles in the shape of bewildered, small, gray-suited men
and women-arbites indent to Belben; and abruptly the loud and
terrible moaning of an emergency, ship-out-of-control signal
erupted into life and continued without pause. Already the atmo-
sphere of the corridor had the acrid taste of smoke, and there were
cries to him for help from the half-seen figures of the arbites.

The incredible was happening. Below them and around them
all, the great spaceship had evidently caught fire from the two

explosions, and was now helpless, a brief new star falling through
the endless distances of interstellar space. Spaceships were not
supposed to bum, especially the massive vessels of the Albenareth
-but this one was doing so.

A coldness began to form in the pit of Giles' stomach; for the
air around him was already warming and now beginning to haze
with the smoke, and the sounds of arbite terror he heard tore at his
conscience like sharp and jagged icicles.

He fought off his ingrained response toward the frightened
indentees around him, walling it off, surrounding it with his own
fury. He had a job to do, a duty to finish. That came first, before
anyone or anything. The arbites aboard were not his direct re-
sponsibility. He began to run, dodging the hands of the reaching
figures that loomed up through the smoke ahead of him, brushing
them aside, now and then hurdling a fallen one who could not be

sidestepped.

And all the while around the cold core in him, his fury grew.