"Edmond Hamilton - The Star Hunters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

Stack said stolidly, тАЬTheir cruisers ahead have radar-ranged us. We're running right onto them now."

Mason glanced through the scanner-window. Aldebaran was now a great red blaze amid the stars, a little
to the right. Its smaller companion-sun was almost hidden in its glare.

"To fool them on our intentions, we shouldn't turn toward it till the last moment,тАЭ said Stack. тАЬThat
means, when they start shelling us."

Mason nodded. тАЬIt's your ship."

"Is it?тАЭ said Stack sourly. тАЬIt was until I came under Intelligence orders. Now I don't know."
Mason did not answer that. He watched, and waited. Out there in the star-gleaming void ahead of them,
the cruisers of Orion were closing toward them, their target-trackers were at work, andтАФ

A beautiful red-gold flare blossomed to their left, blotting out the whole universe in its blinding radiance.
An instant later, another flare burst on their right, this one so close that the scout was tossed around like a
photon on the crest of a solar prominence. Guns inconceivably far away were loosing missiles whose
self-powered ion drive hurled them at milli-lightspeeds faster than any starship.

Stack said to the pilot, тАЬThat's close enough. The pattern's set up. Turn off and go on auto."

The pilot moved switches and then sat back, his hands hanging idly, his shoulders quivering.

The scout swung sharply and plunged toward the red blaze of Aldebaran, like a moth bent on suicide in
the mighty star.

"I hope," said Stack, тАЬthat nobody gets in our way."

The skin between Mason's shoulders crawled, as he watched the great red star and its small companion
leap toward them. Already, at this speed, the thronging specks of its eighteen planets were coming into
sight.

To run through a planetary system at milli-light-speeds was flatly forbidden by every law in the galaxy. It
was also sheer madness. A computer could allow for the position of every planet and moon and minor
body in the system. A computer could not allow for the interplanetary shipping that thronged between
those worlds. They were taking a calculated risk, and if they hit anything they would never know it at all.

No human pilot could make the abrupt compensations and changes of course necessary to avoid all
those circling worlds and moons. The auto-pilot clicked smugly to itself as it rushed them on.

Mason glimpsed a fleck of light that came up with heart-stopping speed, growing like a blown-up balloon
into a vast, ice-clad planet with a host of little moons, reeling past them and dropping behind.

He clung to a stanchion as the auto-pilot cracked and the SC-1419 heeled over sharply. They went
rushing along the rim of an asteroidal zone that, was like a mighty river of stone in the sky, then heeled
again and now Aldebaran and its little companion were glaring again in their faces, bigger than ever. The
two suns marched away abruptly to the left as the auto shifted their course, and a huge planet of saffron
and black swung past.