"David L. Kuzminski - On the One Hand" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuzminski David L)

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Janus stared at the asteroid belt in front of his ship. It would be only too easy to override the controls and
manually drive his ship straight into the confusing jumble of orbiting rocks. He contemplated it for a
moment, then thought of the list Jill gave him. He looked at it for the first time after retrieving it from a
pocket. There wasn't anything unusual on it. Merely things he'd bought before for Jill and himself. The
trouble was, he could scarcely afford any of what she wanted, let alone the things they needed.

Janus wondered why he even came out to the asteroid belt once more since he was unlikely to find
anything. It hadn't been so bad at first when there were lots of wrecks studding the belt that could be
salvaged for the precious metals in them. He'd found a few. So had other salvage operators. Then the
number of wrecks seemed to dwindle as there just weren't any ships being lost to it as there was in the
old days. It was a supply that was bound to dwindle and run out eventually. The same technology that
made it possible for him to salvage those wrecks was also responsible for preventing more ships from
ending up destroyed.

Still, he thought how easy it would be to add just one more ship. At least he'd give some other poor
salvage operator one last ship to recover. He reached for the controls and froze midway to them. Try as
he might, he couldn't force himself to reach any farther. Reluctantly, he sadly concluded after several
agonizing moments that he didn't have the courage to take his life. He knew then that even if bullets
weren't expensive, he didn't possess the nerve to take his life earlier. Thinking earlier about how much the
bullets cost was merely a convenient way to put off what he was too afraid to do. He knew that now.

For several moments, tears flowed down his cheeks. His body heaved slightly while he cried out of pity
for himself. He might have cried longer except for the sensor tone that announced the presence of a huge
cache of metal that was most likely a ship.

Janus straightened up in his seat and cleared his eyes to stare mistily at the console in front of him. It took
a few moments before he could see clearly. Then he doubted his vision. He couldn't remember ever
finding a wreck as large as the sensor was indicating.

"Holy mother," Janus muttered. "What the hell have we here? Not the Stellar Princess, I don't think. I
can't be that lucky to have found the largest ship ever lost in the belt."

Janus stared some more at the sensor panel. The figures didn't change any. If anything, the figures
seemed to firm up as the mass came nearer in the orbiting rocks in front of his ship. All the while, Janus
attempted not to think of all the valuables that were lost on the Stellar Princess when it was lost decades
ago. Plenty of salvagers had tried to find it before only to fail. They were lured by the presence of jewels,
precious metals, and other valuables the passengers took with them on board the ill-fated ship. That
wasn't even taking into account some of the precious metals used in the engine and controls of the ship.

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Janus stared at the wreck that floated within the cosmic rubble with the flow as it wended its way in an
eternal orbit. It was close enough now for visual observation and for him to see that, though the ship was
large, it wasn't the Stellar Princess. What it was, he didn't rightly know. One thing for certain that he did
know was that it wasn't any ship lost by men. Not when Janus knew that only one large ship had ever
been lost. They were too closely regulated by the government for that kind of accident to happen twice.
It was usually the small, privately owned stuff that got into trouble and became wrecks. That or the
occasional mid-size freighter that carried dangerous cargo and probably didn't leave enough behind to
find, let alone salvage.