"Gordon Eklund - Serving in Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eklund Gordon)

тАв"Arthur Dodge," said the Captain. Dodge was the
professional historianтАФno surprise there.

"Jason Clarke," was the third name read.

Then came: "Leonard Walters."

The tenth name spoken by the Captain was: "Mary Norwood."

Then came the eleventh nameтАж the twelfth. Numbers
thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen.

When the twentieth nameтАФKirk RayburnтАФwas announced
Jan ceased counting. It was more than halfway over. That was
terrible enough to know.

Yet name continued to follow name. Everyone gasped in relief.
A few dared to cheer. One very young boyтАФ Barry
ReynoldsтАФactually broke down and cried. Jan refused to blame
him. Right now, he felt very much like doing the same. He didn't
want to dieтАФnot here, in this place. He wanted to see his home
again.

The Captain read another name. It wasn't Jan's.

It seemed to him far more than thirty-nine names had already
been uttered. Maybe the Captain, deviously, was reading them
over a second time to extend the torture.

Then the Captain said, "And Jan Jeroux."

After that, he turned quickly and walked back to hand the list
to Whitlow.

Jan sat, too stunned to gasp or shriek or wail or cry or faint or
groan or howl. He had passed! How about that? Passed!

It was all over. He was lastтАФbut alive.

Then, in the row immediately behind Jan's, someone
screamed. This was not a cry of relief or joy. Rather, this came
from sheer terror.

Jan spun around to see.

It was Albert Mitchum, a boy barely sixteen, who had claimed
seven generations of corps descent before Gail informed him the
Lackland Process was barely fifty years old. Mitchum was
standing upon the seat of his chair. He shook his fists at the
stage: