"Frank Herbert - Escape Felicity" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

'Eighty, ninety days, that's all anyone can take out there,' Bingaling had said. 'And I'm telling you, in that
cloud it's worse. You get the push practically the minute you go in.'



Beirut had his ship down to a safe speed now, nosing into the first tenuous layers. There was no mystery
about the cloud's composition, he reminded himself. It was hydrogen, but in a concentration that made
swift flight suicidal.

'They got this theory,' Bingaling had said, 'that it's an embryo star like. One day it's just going to go
fwoosh and compress down into one star mass.'

Beirut eased the controls. He could sense his ship around him like an extension of his own nerves. She
was a pinnacle class for which he and his fellow pilots had a simple and obscene nickname - two hundred
and fifty meters long, crowded from nose to tubes with the equipment for determining if a planet could
support human life. In the sleep-freeze compartment directly behind him were the double-checks - two
pairs of rhesus monkeys and ten pairs of white mice.

D-ship pilots contended they'd seeded more planets with rhesus monkeys and white mice than they had
with humans.

Beirut switched to his stern instruments. One hour into the cloud and already the familiar stars behind him
were beginning to fuzz off. He felt the first stirrings of unease; not the push ... but disquiet.

He crossed his arms, touching the question-mark insignia at his left shoulder. He could feel the ripe green
film of corrosion on the brass threads.I should polish up, he thought. But he knew he wouldn't. He
looked around him at the pilot compartment, seeing unracked food cannisters, a grease smear across the
computer console, dirty fatigues wadded under a dolly seat.

It was a sloppy ship.

Beirut knew what was said about him and his fellow pilots back in the top echelons of the D-Service.

'Rogues make the best searchers.'

It was an axiom, but the rogues had their drawbacks. They flouted rules, sneered at protocol, ignored
timetables, laughed at vector search plans ... and kept sloppy ships. And when they disappeared - as
they often did - the Service could never be sure what had happened or where.

Except that the man had been prevented from returning ... because there was always the push.

Beirut shook his head. Every thought seemed to come back to the push. He didn't have it yet, he
assured himself. Too soon. But the thought was there, aroused. It was the fault of that cloud.

He re-activated the rear scanners. The familiar stars were gone, swallowed in a blanket of nothingness.
Angrily, he turned off the scanner switch.
I've got to keep busy,he thought.

For a time he set himself to composing and refining a new stanza for the endless D-ship ballad: 'I Left