"David Drake - RCN 02 - Lt. Leary Commanding" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

Adele said, raising her voice slightly. Her words had the precision of the teeth of a saw cutting timber to
the proper fit. "The reason we're not in an Alliance prisonтАФor deadтАФis that you never let any of us
doubt that you were going to get us free. I have far too much respect for the organization of which I'm
now an officerтАФ"

She touched a fingertip to the rank flash on her collar with a thin smile.

"тАФto doubt that those in charge can also see the merit of a more extroverted personality than mine when
the task involves leading others into battle."

A plume of steam expanded from a berth halfway across the port. The ground trembled for several
seconds before the roar of a ship lifting off reached Daniel's party through the air. He slipped his goggles
down to protect his eyesтАФthe optics blocked UV completely and filtered white light to a safe
intensityтАФand looked toward the event.

In truth, Daniel was glad to have an excuse not to respond. He was comfortable with the praise of his
peers and generally amused by the compliments of civilians who hadn't the least notion of what they were
talking about. Adele's words were disconcerting, though. He couldn't equate her cold analysis with the
confused bumbling he remembered going through; to ultimate success, agreed, but that was due less to
Daniel's own efforts than to luck and the expert assistance which Adele and so many others provided.

The ship lifted high enough that its plasma motors no longer licked a shroud of steam from the pool on
which the vessel had floated. The plume of ions flaring from the thrusters was a rainbow beauty over
which a long steel cigar continued to lift. She was an Archaeologist-class heavy cruiser, an old ship with a
greater length-to-beam ratio than more modern vessels of the type. If Daniel had wanted to, his goggles
would have let him read the pennant number to identify her.

The plasma motors stripped atoms and voided them as ions to provide thrust. Any reaction mass would
do, but water was ideal as well as being available generally on human-habitable worlds. Permanent
harbor facilities were usually on seas or lakes which absorbed the plasma roaring from the thrusters at
stellar heat and made refueling a matter of extending a hose.
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When the vessel was well above the surface of the planet, she would switch to her High Drive, which
used matter-antimatter conversion to provide sufficient inertial velocity to enter the Matrix. The High
Drive was efficient but not perfect. If exhausted into an atmosphere, atoms of antimatter would flare and
eat away the vessel itself.

The trio let the throb of the cruiser's liftoff drop back from its plateau before any of them tried to talk
over it. Harbor Three was a huge installation with frequent movements, but the sound of a heavy ship
taking off or landing made it impossible to speak in a normal voice anywhere within the perimeter.

Uncle Stacey took out his hundred-florin touchpieceтАФpart of an issue struck twenty-two years before
to mark the birth of Speaker Leary's son Daniel. He spun it so that the internal diffraction grating caught
the light.

"People talk about how pretty Cinnabar coins are," he said as they watched the cruiser rise. "There's