"Michael Flynn - Wreck of The Rivers of Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flynn Michael)

bet; but it was a matter of prideтАФand pride loves loss above surrender.

For a while, hovering in JupiterтАЩs magnetosphere,The River maintained a precarious trade harvesting
hydrogen from the gas giantтАЩs outer atmosphere. Passing the long hours under the maddening whine of
the compressors, theRivers told each other how important they still were.

тАЬThe Farnsworths canтАЩt fly

Without the тАШHтАЩ we supply.тАЭ

But in their hearts they knew they were no more than water boys for the nukes.

In 2083, Centaurus Corporation boughtMSS The River of Stars and fit her with a quartet of Farnsworth
cages in the Deimos Yards. To the crew it was the final humiliation. Sacrilege, some of the old-timers
shouted as they resigned their berths; and the engineer and his mate received a less than heartfelt

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 TheWreckofTheRiverofStars

welcome from the remnant. She kept her sails and riggingтАФfor flexibility, management claimedтАФand
her precious MS designation. Officially, she was a тАЬhybrid ship,тАЭ unofficially, a bastard. The sailing
master brooded over the situation and, four days out of Deimos, cycled through the тАЩlock for the Long
Walk, leaving the engineer behind with a knife in his heart.

It was the scandal of the day. The Board of Inquiry was a sensation, the disposition, foregone. Centaurus
putThe River of Stars on the block without ever flying her.

Save The RivтАЩ!the cry went up; and sailing enthusiasts, brimming with nostalgia for the days of grace
and romance, pledged their ounces and grainsтАФthough there was little of grace or romance to save by
then. The crew threw their bonuses and hazard pay into the pot. Coltraine himself, on his deathbed,
added a generous codicil to his will. The consortium bought her up, stripped her down, and rigged her
for cargo. Long gone were the luxury modules, the Three Dolphin Club, the Black Sky Casino. Now she
was reduced to the single, broad disk of the old primary decksтАФand large portions of its interior spaces
had been abandoned in place. Only the long, faerie, aerogel main mast recalled sailing days gone byтАФ
but the mast was purely ornamental. The bottom line ruled and, after one last and all-too-brief flight
under sail, the superconducting hoops were coiled into stowage.

And so it was that in 2084 of the Common Era,MSS The River of Stars cast loose as a tramp freighter,
hustling after cargoes across the Middle System.

After that, her luck turned bad.

The Captain
Even Dodge Hand, captain of the tramp shipThe River of Stars , sighed and stared into the ventilation
duct in the ceiling of his cabin. The pain now seemed a sometime and faraway thing, something not
quite real, as if it were happening to someone else. His body was but a husk, a thing of no matter. He felt
that heтАФthe тАЬheтАЭ that was himselfтАФhad begun to float above that very body, leaving it behind. тАЬMr.
Gorgas,тАЭ he said to the first officer, who sat a little apart engrossed in a тАЩputer. тАЬMr. Gorgas, I feel as if I
were floating.тАЭ