"Zach Hughes - Tiger in the Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Zach)

He looked into eternity through Hercules. He knew the configuration,
could look past identifiable stars into the distant reaches of space to the
cluster of galaxies there, spiral, globular, doubled. For a moment he forgot
his confusion and admired the technical achievement as he looked
through what must have been the equivalent of a 16-meter instrument of
amazing sophistication. His was a giant of an eye, all seeing, the field of
view all encompassing.

It was, he knew, impossible. He could not be seeing what he saw. He
moved his head and the galaxy rotated around him. He felt a massive
surge of vertigo and withdrew, closing himself off. He moaned and
clutched at himself and found nothing. He felt smoothly functioning
power, muted hummings, clicking relays, lighted corridors and snug
cabins, circuits making and breaking with calibrated precision. The
inhumanness of it caused him to scream. His voice filled empty corridors
and cabins and the big compartment up front, which was empty of all save
the muted click and hum of a living ship.

To preserve his sanity he explored his own mind and remembered. He
remembered walking laboriously, clad in life system gear, in the sub-Earth
gravity of a dim, cold world. He saw Plank's Pride as she sat atop her fins
on the fused stone of the pad, her hatch open. He could see the white
dwarf star rising to begin a 73 Earth-hour day. Before the day was one
quarter old, the Pride would lift. Earth was four-point-two-eight
light-years away, invisible. It would have taken a power instrument to
even locate old Sol, but it was there, waiting for him to come home.

Thinking of home gave him strength. He ceased his musings and
trained his powerful eye on the stars around him, looking, searching. He
had never seen space as he was seeing it now. All the reference points were
changed. All the colors were different. Ordinarily, space was a vast
emptiness sprinkled with white. Space was black velvet and salt. But with
his new vision space was a study in living blues and reds.

More in control of himself now, he set about trying to solve the problem
of what had happened to him. He studied the surroundings.

There was air in the ship and it was rich and sweet. He did not,
however, breath it. Again he felt the threat of shock, forced himself to
close his eyes and try to sense the movement of the ship. A near star was
closing at a speed that amazed him.

"Light minus ten," he said aloud.

The sound of his own voice was comforting. He heard it within his head
and on the speakers throughout the ship, a harsh rasp of a voice, the result
of damage suffered when a line ruptured on the Pride halfway out from
home on the first trip, forcing him to breathe acrid fumes before he could
take protective measures.