"Alan Dean Foster - The Black Hole" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

mystery for the muses. Count your lucky stars.
Glancing out the port of the laboratory cabin, he tried to do just that. But
there were far too many, and none that could unequivocally be deemed
lucky.
Although he had pleasant company in the room, he felt sad and lonely.
Lonely because he had been away from home too long, sad because their
mission had turned up nothing.
He forced himself to stand a little straighter. So you consider yourself a
fortunate man. So stop complaining and do what youтАЩre designed to do.
Report. He raised the tiny, pen-shaped recorder to his lips, continuing to
stare out the port as he spoke.
тАЬDecember twenty-four. Aboard the deep-space research vessel
Palomino. Harry Booth reporting.
тАЬShip and personnel are tired and discouraged, but both are still
functioning as planned. ManтАЩs long search for life in this section of our
galaxy is drawing to a close.тАЭ
Pausing, he glanced back into the lab to study his companions. A tense,
slim man tapped a stylus nervously on a light-pad and looked back up at
Booth. He wore an expression of perpetual uncertainty and looked much
younger than the reporter, though they were not so different in age. The
uncertainty and nervousness were mitigated by an occasionally elfin sense
of humor, a wry outlook on the cosmos. The man executed a small,
condescending bow toward Booth; the corners of his mouth turned up
slightly.
Behind him stood a softly beautiful woman whose face and figure were
more graphically elfin than the manтАЩs sense of humor. Her mind, however,
was as complex as the whorls in her hair. Both scientists were more serious
than any Booth was used to working with, a touch too dedicated for his
taste. He might never truly get to know them, but he had respected them
from the first day out. They were cordial toward the lone layman in their
midst, and he reciprocated as best he could.
She was feeding information into the lab computer. As always, the sight
had an unnerving effect on Booth. It reminded him of a mother feeding her
baby. Where Katherine McCrae was concerned, the analogy was not as
bizarre as it might have been if applied to another woman. There was a
particular reason why one would view her association with machines as
unusually intimate.
Booth returned to his dictation. тАЬBased upon five years of research
involving stars holding planets theoretically likely to support life, by the
fair-haired boy of the scientific world, Dr. Alex DurantтАЭтАФthe man who had
bowed now grinned playfully back at himтАФ тАЬthis expedition has concluded
eighteen months of extensive exploration and netted, as with all previous
expeditions of a similar nature and purpose, nothing. Not a single alien
civilization, not a vertebrate, nothing higher than a few inconsequential and
unremarkable microbes, plus evidence of a few peculiar chemical reactions
on several scattered worlds.тАЭ
Booth clicked off the recorder and continued staring at Durant. тАЬThat
about sum it up, Alex?тАЭ
Repeated disappointment had purged Durant of the need to react
defensively to such observations. тАЬUnnecessarily flip, perhaps, but you