"Planet Of Twilight (Barbara Hambley)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

pouring in. Midshipman Gasto down. Engineering Chief Cho P'qun down.
Sir, we can't get any signal from maintenance...
"Foursi." He clicked through a channel to the Central Computer's
Operating Signal Division-Division 4C. "Emergency reprogramming request. All
maintenance droids of the..." His head was aching-his chest, too. He found it
difficult to breathe. Stress, he told himself. And no wonder. He had to find
the signal block, had to get in touch with the Chief of State's flagship. Had
to get a signal out to the Sector Medical Facility on Nim Drovis.
"All maintenance droids of the See-Three category. Search for nonstandard
equipment in..." What color would the lines be, that a signal blocker would be
cut into? "Nonstandard equipment in the green lines." He hoped that was right.
His head was throbbing. "Implement immediately."
Not that it would do much good, he thought. Droids were systematic.
Their method of hunting for nonstandard equipment would be to start at
the Adamantine's nose and work to the stern, investigating every hatch and
relay, rather than checking the most obvious places first, the places where
some member of Seti Ashgad's small good-faith party might have made a few
moments for himself alone.
Not that it had to be Ashgad. A signal blocker could have been set with a
timer. The thing could have been planted in the Adamantine before their
inconspicuous departure from Hesperidium.
Zoalin found that without thinking about it, he had slumped back into his
chair. His hands and feet felt cold. He cut into the image of the flagship
Borealis, distant against the blackness of the stars. So close, but kilometers
away in the palely shimmering green glow of the planet beneath.
Had this, whatever it was, broken out there, too. Was Captain Ioa trying
to reach him.
He leaned his head back. Twenty minutes, he thought. Twenty minutes.
He felt as if he were in a turbolift, plunging into long darkness.
"I realize there's been a great deal of ill said about the Rationalist
Party over the past few years." Seti Ashgad had risen from his chair as if the
sheer importance of his cause drove him to his feet, and paced restlessly back
and forth behind it. "But I assure you, Your Excellency, that we're not the-
the strip-mining capitalists we've been portrayed.
The Newcomers went to Nam Chorios in the hopes of opening new frontiers.
Individual entrepreneurs can't get a foothold in Pedducis Chorios. Places like
Nim Drovis and Budpock and Ampliquen have their own civilizations, settled up
and locked in. Given the presence of the heavy industry in the Antemeridian
sector, the trading opportunities alone should have made the entire colonizing
of Nam Chorios self-sufficient!
"But it isn't just that the Newcomers are forbidden to bring in any ships
larger than a personal flitter-or to let any out. The Theran habit of opening
fire on any vessel over a certain size means that when equipment wears out, it
can't be replaced except for an exorbitant fee.
It means there's no export to support anything but the barest subsistence
livelihood. It means we have to pay smugglers' prices for everything. It means
that because the Registry didn't give sufficient information about conditions,
these people have condemned themselves to exile in a cultural backwater. You
can't pretend that's fair."
"No, I can't," said Leia slowly. "But isn't that what colonization is