"Murray Leinster - The Duplicators" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

There came again a loud clicking, followed by another Subdued mechanical grunt. Link made a guess at the origin of the
sounds. It was most likely a pressure-reduction valve releasing air from a high-pressure tank to maintain a lower pressure
somewhere else. If Link had taken thought, his hair would have stood on end immediately. But he didn't.
The cubicle, moving sedately around him, brought one of its walk within reach of his foot. He kicked. He floated away
from the ceiling to a gentle impact on the floor. He held on, more or less, by using the palms of his hands as suction-cupsтАФ
a most unsatisfactory systemтАФand got within reach of a table-leg. He swung himself about and shoved for the doorway.
He floated to it in slow motion, caught hold of a stair-tread, got a grip on the door frame, and oriented himself with respect
to the room,
He was in the mess room of a certainly ancient and obviously small ship of space. All was shabbiness. Where paint had not
peeled off, it stayed on in blisters. The flooring was worn through to the metal plates beneath. There were other signs of
neglect. There had been no tidying of this mess room for a long time.
He heard a faint, new, rumbling sound. It stopped, and came again. It was overhead, in the direction the stairway led to.
The rumbling came once more. It was rhythmic.
Link grasped a hand-rail and heaved himself gently upward. He arrived at a landing, and the rumbling noise was louder.
This level of the ship contained cabins for the
crew. The rumbling came from a higher level still. He went up more steps, floating as before.
He arrived at a control-room which was antiquated and grubby and of very doubtful efficiency. There were ports, which
were covered with frost.
Somebody snored above his head. That was the rumbling sound. Link lifted his eyes and saw the snorer. A small, whiskery
man scowled portentiously even in his sleep. He floated in mid-air as Link had floated, but with his knees drawn up and his
two hands beside his cheek as if resting on an imaginary pillow. And he snored.
Link reflected, and then said genially,
"Hello!"
The whiskery man snored again. Link saw something familiar about him. Yes. He'd been involved in the festivity of the
night before. Link remembered having seen him scowling ferociously from the side lines while tumult raged and firehoses
played.
"Ship ahoy!" said Link loudly.
The small man jumped, in the very middle of a snore. He choked and blinked and made astonished movements, and of
course began to turn eccentric half-circles in mid-air. In one of his turnings he saw Link. He said peevishly,
"Dammit, don't stand there starin'! Get me down! But don't turn on the gravity! Want me to break my neck?"
Link reached up and caught a foot. He brought the little man down to solidity and released him.
"Huh!" said the little man waspishly. "You're awake."
"Apparently," admitted Link. "Are you?"
The little man snorted. He aligned himself and gave a shove. He floated through the air to the control board. He caught its
corner. He looked it over and pushed a button. Ship gravity came on. There was a sudden slight jolt, and then a series of
lesser jolts, and then the fine normal feeling of gravity and weight and up and down. Things abruptly
looked more sensible. They weren't, but they looked that way. '
"I'm curious," said Link. "Have you any idea where we are?"
The whiskery man said scornfully,
"Where we are? How'd I know? That's your business!"
His air grew truculent as Link didn't grasp the idea.
"My business?"
"You're the astrogator, ain't you? You signed on last night; I had to help you hold the pen, but you signed on! Astrogator,
third officer's ticket, and you said you could astro-gate a wash bucket from Sirius Three to the Rim with nothin' but a root-
rule and a logarithm table. That's what you said! You said you'd astrogated a Norse spaceliner six hundred lightyears tail-
first to port after her overdrive unit switched poles. You saidтАФ"
Link held up his hand.
"I ... er ... I recognize the imaginative style," he said painfully. "It's mine, in my more exuberant moments. But how did that
land me . . . wherever I am?"
"You made a deal with me," said the little man, truculently. "Thistlethwaite's the name. You signed on this ship, the