"Dragons Dawn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

updates had only confirmed a tentative preference made seventeen years ago
when he had first studied the EEC reports. He had never anticipated much
difficulty with landing; it was a smooth and accident-free debarkation that
caused him anxiety. There was no rescue backup hovering solicitously in the
skies over Pern, nor disaster teams on its surface.
In organizing the debarkation, Paul had chosen as flight officer
Fulman Stone, a man who had served with him throughout the Cygnus campaign.
For the past two weeks, Fulmar┤s crews had been all over the Yoko┤s three
shuttle vehicles and the admiral┤s gig, ensuring that there would be no
malfunction after fifteen years in the cold storage of the flight deck. The
Yoko┤s twelve pilots, under Kenjo Fusaiyuki, had gone through rigorous
simulator drills well spiced with the most bizarre landing emergencies.
Most of the pilots had been combat fighters, and were fit and fully
experienced at extricating themselves from tricky situations, but none had
quite the record of Kenjo Fusaiyuki. Some of the less experienced shuttle
pilots complained about Kenjo┤s methods; Paul Benden had courteously
listened to the complaints -- and ignored them.
Paul had been surprised and flattered when Kenjo had signed up with
the expedition. Somehow, he had thought the man would have signed on to an
exploratory unit where he could continue to fly as long as his reflexes
lasted. Then Paul remembered that Kenjo was a cyborg, with a prosthetic
left leg. After the war, the Exploration and Evaluation Corps had had their
choice of experienced, whole personnel, and cyborgs had been shunted into
administrative positions. Automatically, Paul made his left hand into a
fist, his thumb rubbing against the knuckles of the three replacement
fingers which had always worked as well as his natural ones. But there was
still no feeling in the pseudoflesh. Consciously, he relaxed the hand,
certain once again that he could hear a subtle plastic squeak in the joints
and the wrist.
He turned his mind to real problems, like the debarkation ahead,
knowing that unforeseeable delays or foul-ups could stall the entire
operation as cargo and passengers began to flow from the orbiting ships. He
had appointed good men as supercargoes: Joel Lilienkamp as surface
coordinator, and Desi Arthied on the Yoko. Ezra and Jim, of the Bahrain and
Buenos Aires, were equally confident in their own debarkation personnel,
but one minor hitch could cause endless rescheduling. The trick would be to
keep everything moving.
The admiral turned starboard off the main corridor and reached the
wardroom. Once again, he hoped that the meeting would not drag on. As he
raised his hand to brush the access panel, he could see that he had arrived
with two minutes to spare before the other two captains screened in. First
there would be the brief formality of Ezra Keroon, as fleet astrogator,
confirming the exact ETA at their parking orbit, and then the landing site
would be chosen.
╗The betting┤s eleven to four now, Lili,л Paul heard Drake Bonneau
saying to Joel as the access panel to his wardroom whooshed open.
╗For or against?л Paul asked, grinning as he entered. Those
present, led by Kenjo┤s example, shot to their feet, despite Paul┤s
dismissing gesture. He took in the two blank screens which in precisely
ninety-five seconds would reveal the faces of Ezra Keroon and Jim Tillek,