"Alexander Jablokov - Deep Drive" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jablokov Alexander)

across interstellar space. Right?"

' 'If he had one, it vanished someplace between the orbit of Uranus and his impact point on Venus," Soph
said, taking his rhetorical question at face value. "There's no sign of one. The Venusians do have his ship,
what's left of it. They had to collect the pieces from the heights of the Maxwells."

"So, no deepdrive. Fine. What are you after, then? What makes it worth your while?"

"Something's up with Ripi. He's a VronnanтАФthe only example of that species in the Solar System. He
was fleeing something when he came in, so he was just as glad the Venusians stuck him in velvet
confinement when he landed there. He's let out dribs and drabs of Vronnan technologyтАФit seems mostly
biologicalтАФbut nothing worth the amount the Venusians have sunk into him. Now, for the first time, he's
let out that he wants to leave. Something's changed, either back in Vronnan space or here in the System.
Something Ripi is involved in. It could be big."

"Could be." Lightfoot tugged at his jowls with thumb and forefinger. Soph thought he had waited all his
life to have them, just for that ponderous gesture. "There still isn't any reason to risk your pretty little butt
on this expedition, Soph. Kammer and Kun ... amateurs. I don't trust them."

"Never mind my butt," Soph said, for form's sake. "And I know it's a risk. Since when have we not taken
risks? Come on, Lightfoot."
6 Alexander Jablokov

"Calculated risks. For real gains." Lightfoot paused for a long moment. "It's against the order of nature for
a mother to inherit her son's obsessions, Soph."

The mention of their dead son rocked her. They usually maneuvered around him, as if his body lay on the
table between them, hands folded on his chest. Lightfoot never mentioned Stephan, not in fights, not in
despair, never. In over two years, this was the first time. It had to mean something.

"LightfootтАФ"

"Sorry, sorry." He turned away and slumped down against the chair arm, as if examining the flawed
layers of blue-gray chalcedony piled in the corner. The storeroom was lit by flicker bulbs that had once
provided romantic light to the huge ballroom upstairs. They had grown dim and beat in their fixtures like
suffocating fireflies.

"It's against the order of nature for a son to die before his parents," Soph said to his back.

' 'Well, Stephan never did pay much attention to the rules, did he?"

"No, he didn't."

Stephan had been their only son. Soph and Lightfoot had talked about having more children, but
somehow, between the oscillations in Lightfoot's fortunes and their endless operations, schemes, and
missions, there had never been time for another. Stephan had become the repository of their warring
ambitions.

Perhaps in response, his had been a life of risk. While still legally underage, he had served in the
Earth-Mars War, with its far-flung battlespaces in the Asteroid Belt and the moons of Jupiter. Soph