"SD Gottesman - Firepower" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gotlieb Phyllis)

"About Miss MacNeice, sir. She seemed awfully broken up about what I did. How is
she now ?"
Resting easy in Cell Eleven," said the Admiral. "Now go away."
"Thank you, sir," said the ensign, saluting as he closed the door.
"Good boy, that," said Voss. "It pays to have semi-fanatics like him in your
train. They'll do the dirty work when nobody else will. Remember that,
Fitzjames."
"I will, Voss," said the Admiral. "Now about this speech--"
The ensign was walking down one of the very long corridors of the ship,
whistling cheerfully, oblivious to the superstition to the effect that it's the
worst kind of luck to a ship; even worse than changing her name.
And In Cell Eleven--neat and comfortable, but a cell--Babe MacNeice was fiddling
desperately with the communications control. Trust those bloody incompetents,
she dryly thought, to leave a woman unsearched because a matron wasn't handy
Then, by the most convenient of miracles, there was a little tone signal from
the switchboard. "It works," she said in a hushed whisper. "It was bound to
happen--nobody could try as hard as I've been trying and not get some kind of
results."
She hissed into the tiny grid mouthpiece: "Hello--who's in ?"
A male voice grumbled: "My God, woman, you've been long enough about is ! I'm
Casey, heading towards Spica because I can't think of anything else to do. My
fuel's low, too."
"Keep going," she said. "When you get there be prepared for anything at all. I'm
not making promises, but there's a chance. And my God! What a chance! You get
out now. I have some heavy coverage to do."
"Good luck, lady, whoever you
She smiled briefly and fiddled with the elaborate, but almost microscopically
tiny, controls that directed the courses of the Intelligence Wing.
"Come in, anybody, in the Twenty-Third Cosmic Sector. Anybody at all. This is
MacNeice--urgent !"
"Not the famous Babe herself ?" came a woman's voice dryly. "I'm listening,
dearie."
"You locate on Aldebaran III, sister, in no more than ten hours. Keep under
cover. Now get out. Aldebaran III has to be covered."
With an anxious note the voice asked: "Just a minute --how's Barty? I heard a
rumor--"
"Forget it, sister," snapped Babe. "You have a job to do." She cut the woman out
and called in rapid succession as many of the thirty Cosmic Sectors as she could
get. One set had fallen into the hands of the Navy, and that was bad, but she
cut out before they could have traced it or even guessed what it was. There had
been a confused murmur and a single distinct voice saying: "The damned thing's a
radio, sir!' before she cut out.
What she had been doing was to locate operatives on the principal planets and
stations of the Cosmos; operatives prepared for anything. It had been a job of
routing; they bunched together when they weren't under orders. She had to break
them up--and she did.
After locating one stubborn female, she heard a man's tread in the corridor
outside and as quickly as she could hid the little panel-like affair, which,
considering where she was forced to hide it, of was not a very speedy job of
concealment.