"Peter F. Hamilton - Escape Route" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F)

expensive refining process to extract it from ore. It's there waiting for us in its purest form; gold, silver,
platinum, iridium. Whatever takes your fancy."


Lady Macbeth sat on a docking cradle in Sonora's spaceport, a simple dull-grey sphere 57 metres in
diameter. All Adamist starships shared the same geometry, dictated by the operating parameters of the
ZTT jump, which required perfect symmetry. At her heart were four separate life-support capsules,
arranged in a pyramid formation; there was also a cylindrical hangar for her spaceplane, a smaller one for
her Multiple Service Vehicle, and five main cargo holds. The rest of her bulk was a solid intestinal tangle
of machinery and tanks. Her main drive system was three fusion rockets capable of accelerating her at
eleven gees, clustered round an antimatter intermix tube which could multiply that figure by an unspecified
amount; a sure sign of her combat-capable status. (By a legislative quirk it wasn't actually illegal to have
an antimatter drive, though possession of antimatter itself was a capital crime throughout the
Confederation.)
Spaceport umbilical hoses were jacked into sockets on her lower hull, supplying basic utility
functions. Another expense Marcus wished he could avoid; it was inflicting further pain on his already
ailing cash-flow situation. They were going to have to fly soon, and fate seemed to have decided what
flight it would be. That hadn't stopped his intuition from maintaining its subliminal assault on Antonio
Ribeiro's scheme. If he could just find a single practical or logical argument against it ... He waited
patiently while the crew drifted into the main lounge in life-support capsule A. Wai Choi, the spaceplane
pilot, came down through the ceiling hatch and used a stikpad to anchor her shoes to the decking. She
gave Marcus a sly smile that bordered on teasing. There had been times in the last five years when she'd
joined him in his cabin, nothing serious, but they'd certainly had their moments. Which, he supposed,
made her more tolerant of him than the others.
At the opposite end of the spectrum was Karl Jordan, the Lady Mac's systems specialist. with the
shortest temper, the greatest enthusiasm, and certainly the most serious of the crew. His age was the
reason, only 25; the Lady Mac was his second starship duty.
As for Schutz, who knew what emotions were at play in the cosmonik's mind; there was no visible
outlet for them. Unlike Marcus, he hadn't been geneered for freefall-, decades of working on ships and
spaceport docks had seen his bones lose calcium, his muscles waste away, and his cardiovascular system
atrophy. There were hundreds like him in every asteroid, slowly replacing their body parts with
mechanical substitutes. Some even divested themselves of their human shape altogether. At 63, Schutz
was still humanoid, though only 20 percent of him was biological. His body supplements made him an
excellent engineer.
"We've been offered a joint-prize flight," Marcus told them. He explained Victoria's theory about disc
systems and the magnetic anomaly array. "Ribeiro will provide us with consumables and a full cryogenics
load. All we have to do is take Lady Mac to a disc system and scoop up the gold."
"There has to be a catch," Wai said. "I don't believe in mountains of gold just drifting through space
waiting for us to come along and find them."
"Believe it," Roman said. "You've seen the Dorados. Why can't other elements exist in the same
way?"
"I don't know. I just don't think anything comes that easy."
"Always the pessimist."
"What do you think, Marcus?" she asked. "what does your intuition tell you?"
"About the mission, nothing. I'm more worried about Antonio Ribeiro."
"Definitely suspect," Katherine agreed.
"Being a total prat is socially unfortunate," Roman said. "But it's not a crime. Besides, Victoria Keef
seemed levelheaded enough."
"An odd combination," Marcus mused. "A wannabe playboy and an astrophysicist. I wonder how
they ever got together."