"Kay Kenyon -The Seeds of Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kenyon Kay)

the ladder.
"Captain, what's the situation with Babyhawk?" Clio was buckling in, noting the approach of the
lander, moving in on Starhawk.
"An explosion. An hour out toward Crippen. We don't know for sure, but we think there was a leak in a
fuel transport line. Got touched off by an electrical spark. Three wounded, sounds like critically. And the
bay door is still jammed half open. "
The nightmare continued, everything going wrong. Then there was Shaw, Babyhawk's pilot, on comm,
moving into docking range.
"Hold your position, Babyhawk, " Clio told Shaw, "we have a little delay here. "
Russo was on the comm, getting tech reports; growling at bad news, barking something about the
teleoperator maneuvering system, in case they needed to work on the ship surface. Which techs were
saying wasn't needed.
Shaw's voice came crackling into Clio's ears. "You just get your little delay greased up and dumped
out, Lieutenant, I got casualties here, and they're getting real quiet. You copy?"
"Roger. We are jumping on it, Commander. We're gonna bring you in. "
The earphones crackled again. "You're going to bring us in? That's real good news, Starhawk, now I
can sleep. What's the goddamn problem out there, Finn? Over. "
The captain nodded at her, and Clio answered, "The bay doors won't respond, Babyhawk. We're
working it. Another five minutes and I'm going out there and rip the damn things open with a crowbar. "
Faintly, Babyhawk responded. "My God. " Then: "I got a man dying here, Starhawk. Cut the damn
doors off, if you have to. "
Clio looked to Russo, got a slow shake of the head.
"Negative, Babyhawk, that's last resort. We're working this. Stand by. "
Nothing then from Shaw. Clio felt the silence like a fist in her gut.
An hour later they cut the door off after all, with crew hating to use torches, suited up as they were in
the unpressurized landing bay. Then Babyhawk locked on, and they hauled out the casualties. One man
dead, Lieutenant Runnel printed on the breast pocket: a helpful clue since most of his face was blackened
with burns. Two biotechs burned real bad, one of them with blisters for eyes, both unconscious. Posie took
charge of them, looking like a man in way over his head.
Hillis was there, too. Leaned close to Clio, whispered, "I dumped the blood. It's gone. "
Heading home, Clio got Starhawk well into Dive, then sat by the two wounded men in medlab. She was
patched in by remote to bridge control, listening for any alarms, half hoping for some.
Clio watched the life leak out of her two crewmates. In Dive, you saw things like that. Life exiting like
spilled water.
If you die on a Space Recon Dive, deep in the past, the event doesn't set up a paradox. No one in the
present is affected. Your children, for instance, don't disappear. Of course, Diving in inhabited space could
produce dangerous paradoxes. Anything that you changed would set other changes in motion, in geometric
progression, ultimately threatening the very future from which you came. But in the wilderness of space,
the Dive was ninety-nine percent safe from encountering human history, from creating paradoxes. So the
theory went.
Clio kept her deathwatch. When her crewmates' faces were dim as the pallets they lay on, Clio knew
they were dead.


TIME MANAGEMENT

Chapter 2
 They docked on station deep into Clio's sleep period. She heard the ship whine down into position, the
metal on metal of docking, the comm system come alive throughout the ship, footsteps as the crew got
ready to off-load.