"FWLS28" - читать интересную книгу автора (A Future We'd Like to See)

A Future We'd Like To See 1.28 - The Run
By Twoflower (Copyright 1993)

Several star systems and a wide, wide expanse of nothing.
That's how far I had to cover in five minutes for the run.

I strapped in, clenching my teeth as the neurostimulants
were injected into my right arm. The shuttle's engines warmed
up, running several self diagnostics on the warp coils and
hyperspace drives. The self-buckling elastic webbing wrapped
itself around my torso, in front and behind.

I checked with the computer, to make sure the cargo was
secure and kept at the correct temperature levels. It was
absolutely crucial that the cargo be maintained at acceptable
levels; my fate depended on it. Nerves on edge as the stimulants
mixed with perfectly innocent blood cells, I breathed a silent
prayer, braced myself, and tapped the LAUNCH button.

The shuttle tore through the atmosphere, leaving a smoking
crater behind on the launching pad. The stimulants kicked in,
disorienting my brain enough to make it ignore the incredible G
forces. After leaving the planet's grip of gravity, the webbing
tightened, holding me into my seat. The main window, the
windscreen as it were if there were any wind to screen, went
completely black to keep me from seeing the sickening light show
as my ship shot through hyperspace at warp speeds. I tried to
keep a firm eye on the navcomp and keep from passing out as my
brain swam in a sea of synaptic fluids.

I had to do some very fast computations to avoid slamming
into some planets. As usual, the company hadn't programmed the
nav computer correctly. The timer ticked down, at the 2 minute
mark, reaching the dead-end limit of zero. Strange displacement-
induced visions danced by my range of vision. I swallowed them
down and concentrated on the green blip, the destination, as it
approached at unimaginable speeds. I grabbed desparately to my
spinal column to keep it from shooting out of my back.

The chair slammed more stimulants into me as the ship
lurched out of warp and reentered pure hyperspace, then slipped
out of that with a sickening groan. My body was in five places
at once, each place being defined as 'not fun'. The webbing
tightened even more, to the point where I couldn't breathe, as
the ship flew screaming down out of the atmosphere, preparing for
a hopefully soft landing at the coordinates. Various traumatic
childhood memories picked the worst time to surface. Tears,
phlegm and saliva ran together in pools at the back of my helmet.
I comforted to sanity, which was busy panicking and crying like a
baby who had just been terrorized by an anal thermometer, and