"Jacqueline Lichtenberg - Sime Gen 14 - Easy As Hop, Skip And Jump" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lichtenberg Jacqueline)

EASY AS HOP, SKIP AND JUMP
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Gate pass in hand, Klairon Farris surveyed the Pebble Beach standing straight and proud
in the center of her landing grid. Her crew was closer to him than his own family had ever
been; she'd become his home and the focus of a great part of his loyalty.

Unconsciously, he hunched his broad shoulders against an eerie feeling, a dark foreboding
that whispered deep in his mind, "You shouldn't be here. You shouldn't be doing this ..."

An icy chill gripped him in spite of the warm, if somewhat greenish, light from the sun falling
across his straight back. Simes were known to experience disturbingly accurate
premonitions, but he'd never had one before.

Countless times, he'd been warned to yield gracefully if one ever came his way. He'd grown
up with the certainty that he would yield. What was it that held him here now? Why didn't he
fling the pass at the gate guard and go tell Captain Welch to get another astrogator? How
dare he take the lives of his friends into his own temporarily incompetent hands?

He squinted against the wind-whipped dust of the grid field andclutched his billowing green
cape around him. He was out of uniform, officially on leave, and with every right to be so.
How had Welch talked him into this insanity, anyway?

The Cafe Ol├й, the only place on Terwhoolie specializing in human food and drink, was a
dim, green cavernous room with a bar along one wall, a row of dark booths opposite and,
down the center, three rows of the stretched-diamond shaped tables hewn from a moss
green wood.
The "human-style decor" consisted of a flawed mirror behind the bar, and a collection of
ancient calendar art, meaningless to the cold-blooded, egg-laying Terwhoolins, and
practically invisible to human eyes in the gloom. Still, the Ol├й was frequented by human
officers and crew alike because they did have a human chef ... not just a cook.
Klairon faced Captain Welch in the darkness of their booth. They had the place to
themselves as there were no other human ships on the planet's single, public grid-field.
Curbing his exasperation, Klairon answered his Captain's question, mildly, for the fifteenth
time, "Because it's against Regulations, that's why."
Captain Welch put down his coffee cup and leaned forward across the remains of their
lunch, "But I have top priority clearance to lift ship for Port In Brim. This is important, more
important than any chair warmer's regulation! And you're the only astrogator within five days
of Terwhoolie."

"It isn't just any one regulation," Klairon ticked them off on his fingers, "it's against the Sime
Board of Standards Regulations; it's against Interstellar Trade Commission Regulations; it's
against insurance regulations; it's against United Port's authority regulations; it's against
Stellar Trade Winds regulations; its against the Astrogators' Union contract; and
furthermore, it's against my better judgment. In this condition I'm not even allowed to enter a
ship, let alone take responsibility for course plotting."

"Look, Klairon, we've been friends for a long time ..."
"That's why I accepted your lunch invitation, for a friendly chat ..." Klairon gestured at their
surroundings, "this is certainly no place to discuss security matters, or the breaking of such
regulations as pertain to Simes."