"Edmond Hamilton - Battle for the Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

Joe Garstang, beside him, answered without turning. тАЬNothing has been monitored yet. Not yet."

Garstang was a younger man than Birrel, but he was so big and broad and slow-speaking that he made
you think of a rock. The rock could worry, though. Birrel sensed the worry now and thought, He doesn't
like this job ... And he doesn't like having me aboard. No captain likes to be outranked on his own
ship, especially on a mission like this one. Well, that is too bad, I do not like it either, but we are
going ahead into that mess anyway.

He concealed his own profound distaste at the prospect they were watching. It was comparatively quiet
here in the bridge, with only a muted chattering from the calc-room just aft. The place was almost like a
metal-and-plastic shrine, with the broad control-banks as its mechanical altar, Venner and the two
technicians their silent ministrants, and he and Garstang watching the screens like anxious supplicants.

The screens were not really windows. They were the final sensitive parts of a chain of incredibly
complicated mechanisms that took hold of some of the faster-than-light radar information flowing into the
ship, and translated it into visual images. But they looked like windowsтАФwindows through which
smashed the light of a thousand thousand suns.

This place was cluster N-356-44, in the Standard Atlas. It was also hellfire made manifest before them.
It was a hive of swarming suns, pale-green and violet, white and yellow-gold and smoky red, blazing so
fiercely that the eye was robbed of perspective, and these stars seemed to crowd and rub and jostle each
other. Up against the black backdrop of the firmament, they burned, pouring forth the torrents of their
life-energy to whirl in cosmic belts and maelstroms of radiation. Merchant ships would recoil aghast from
the navigational perils here. Unfortunately, this was not a merchant ship.

There was a rift in the cluster, a narrow cleft between cliffs of stars, which was roofed by the flame-shot
glow of a vast, sprawling nebula. It was the only possible way into the heart of the cluster, this channel.
Had others gone in this way? Were they still in here? That was for them to find out.

He looked at the looming, overtopping cliffs of stars that went up to the glowing nebula above and down
to a fiery shoal of suns below. He thought of Lyllin, waiting for him in the quiet house back at Vega. He
thought that he had no business having a wife.

"Radar?тАЭ he asked again.

Garstang looked at the tell-tales and said, тАЬStill nothing.тАЭ He turned, his heavy brows drawn together into
a frown, and said doggedly, тАЬIt still seems to me that if they're in here, we should have come in with the
whole squadron."

Birrel shook his head. He had his own doubts riding him, but, once you started showing doubt, you were
through. He had made his decision, he had committed them, and now he had to look confident about it
no matter how lonely and exposed he felt.

"That could be exactly what Solleremos wants. With the right kind of ambush, a whole squadron could
be clobbered in this mess. Then Lyra would be wide open. No. One ship is enough to risk."

"Yes, sir,тАЭ said Garstang.

"The hell with you, Joe,тАЭ said Birrel. тАЬSay what you're thinking."