"Harrison, Harry - Bill On The Planet Of Robot Slaves - uc" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

Keep the mouth shut and don't volunteer.



C H A P T E R 3

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Give her that, the grand old lady of the garbage fleet, the Imelda Marcos, was a workhorse, yes she was. Maybe she was wider than she was long, pitted and rusty, stained black by coffee grounds, gaily festooned with toilet paper, speckled with potato peels, maybe she was all those things. But she could puff and toot and really do her job. The garbage container had never been made that she could not lift into space. No sewage tanker existed that she could not swing into orbit. She was a worker.
Her commander wasn't. Captain Bly had once been first in his class in the Space Academy, had had all of the promise of the best and the brightest. But he had thrown it all away with one small mistake, one moment's dallying where he should not have dallied, one moment's surrender to lust. Unhappily, his commanding officer had, tragically, returned to his quarters early that same day. He had found young Bly in bed with his wife. And his nephew. Not to mention a sheep, and his favorite hunting dog. The commander had really loved that dog.
Needless to say things did not go well for Bly after that. There are some things that are just not done. Even in the navy. Which says a lot. For a mo
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ment's indiscretion a career had been ruined. He lived to regret it. If only he hadn't taken on the dog too! But it was far, far too late for recriminations. A gentleman would have done the Right Thing. But he was no longer a gentleman. The officers of the fleet had seen to that. He had been shuttled from ship to ship, ever sinking lower, ever moving on. Until he had ended up here in command of the Imelda Marcos.
She was a good old tug and did her job with gruff efficiency. Even though her captain was high or stoned, or both, most of the time. But now, for the first time that any of the crew, even the oldest compacter's mate, could remember, he was sober. Unshaven stubble smeared the pasty gray of his jowls, as shaky of hand, bright red of eye, he stood at his post on the bridge and glared at Admiral Praktis.
"You just can't tramp into my ship without a word, weld that great ugly machine to my control console, take command where you are not wanted..."
"Shut up," Praktis implied. "You will do as you are ordered."
Admiral Lubyanka snarled agreement as he pulled his head out of the depths of the machine in question. "And don't you ever forget that, Bly. You take orders from him. You can fly this junker-but Praktis is in command. The electronic tracker is tracking electronically, which is what this entire damn operation is about. My technician here, Megahertz Mate 2nd Class Cy BerPunk, will follow the escaping ship. He'll give you your course. Your assignment, should you decide to take it, and you have no choice, is to track those damned dragons back to
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their nest-then report the location to me here. Ready, BerPunk?"
The technician soldered one last connection and nodded, his coarse black hair swinging freely over the white pocked skin of his forehead, brushing the black glasses that concealed his eyes. "On line. Systemsgo." he said coarsely. "RAM is ramming, electrons zinging. All systems go-or already gone."
"And about time too, Lubyanka snarled, then stabbed Praktis in the chest with a sharp finger. "Do this job, Praktis, and do it well-or it's your ass."
"It's already my ass so I have nothing to lose. Heave anchor, Lubyanka, or you will blast off with us to the big garbage dump in the sky. Is the ship secured for takeoff, Captain Bly?"
Bly treated him to a look of withering contempt and cracked his knuckles.
"Good," Praktis said. "I see that we are going to get along real nice."
Bill had to step aside, or rather stagger aside since he wasn't that sober yet, when Admiral Lubyanka made his exit. Captain Bly watched until the spacelock indicator changed from red to green, then thumbed the takeoff warning. The alarm sounded through the ship like a gargantuan eructation and the crew hurried to buckle in. Bill dropped into a vacant seat and pulled the straps tight just as Captian Bly switched on full power. Gravity sat on their chests with the 11G takeoff: Except for Bill who had a rat sitting on his chest as well as gravity, for it had been hurled from the pipes in the ceiling by the blast. It glared at Bill with gleaming red eyes, its lips pulled back by the drag of takeof blast to expose its long, yellow incisors. Bill glared back, eyes equally red, his yellow fangs equally exposed. Neither could
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move and they glared in futile hatred until the engines cut out. Bill grabbed for the rat but it leaped to safety and ran out the door.
"We're in orbit," Captain Bly said "What's our course?"
"It's coming, man, coming..." Cy muttered, stabbing buttons and adjusting switches. He sneered at the VDU which was filled with sparkling confetti, then tapped it with a long and dirty fingernail. The image cleared and the trace was clear.
"Time needed. Working it out now. This little old 80286 CPU has got a math coprocessor so it should rustle through the computations like crazy..."
"Shut up," Praktis snarled as he looked around the cabin. Wurber was just starting down the ladder. "You, stop!" he commanded.
"Ahh gotta go to the toilet," he whimpered.
"Your business after my business-and my business is a cold beer. Fetch."
"Got it!" Cy crowed. "Course is right ascension seventy-one degrees, six minutes and seventeen seconds, declination twelve degrees exactly. Hack."
The gyros whined as the garbage tug turned to her new course. Lights flickered and changed on the console under the skilled, if trembling, fingers of her commander.
"Don't unbelt yet," he warned. "The FTL drive, so recently installed, is an experimental model. And this flight is the first experiment."
"Return to base!" Praktis screamed. "I want out!'
"Too late!" Captian Bly chortled in reply, stabbing a button. "Too late by far. We're all in this to
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gether-and I have nothing to lose-since I've already lost everything, everything..."
Quick tears of self-indulgence blinded him. But not so much that he didn't see Praktis creep forward to grab him. A blaster sprang into his hand, its gaping muzzle pitted and scarred. "Sit," he commanded. "And enjoy. Up until now Faster Than Light travel has been by Bloater drive. Now, for the first time ever-that I know about-we will be trying out the Spritzer drive. It was installed by that creepo Admiral Lubyanka. Told me that if I would try it out he would clear my name of all shame. Too late! I told him. I live with shame and will die with shame if I must. Nowhere we go!"
One grimy thumb stabbed the large red button and a gasp ran through the ship as they felt themselves squeezed in an implacable grip. "That's the . . . first part. A black hole has been opened in space in front of the ship. Now we are... being squeezed down. . . so we can be squirted through the hole at
. . FTL speed. That's why it is named the Spritzer drive. We are being pumped under light pressure and spritzed through spa-a-a-ce..."
It was a thoroughly disgusting and uncomfortable way to travel, Bill decided, and yearned for the old Bloater drive. But at least they lived through it, and that was something. When they had become unsqueezed and space outside had returned to normal, Cy turned to his tracker and fiddled with the controls.
"Bang on, baby. The track is still there, stronger and clearer even. And it heads towards that planet you see over there. The one with the concentric rings, an oblate moon and a black spot at the north pole. Do you see it?"
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"Hard to miss," Praktis sniffed, "since it is the only planet around. So chart its position and let's get the hell out of here before we are noticed."
"That comes under the heading of famous last words," Captain Bly blubbered, gaping at the viewscreen which was filled with flying dragons.
"Hit the Spritzer drive and let's get spritzing!" Praktis screamed. But even as the words left his lips it was too late. Well before the soundwaves reached Captain.Bly's ears it was too late. Lightning bolts of ravening energy poured from the dragons' mouths and engulfed the ship.
All the fuses blew, all the lights went out. And they were falling.
"Getting mighty close to that planet," Bill observed, then drew back before the barrage of curses. "Temper, temper," he said. "Does anyone know how we can get out of this one?"