"Lumley, Brian - E-Branch 3 - Avengers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

to look too far ahead, and cruises such as this were best taken one day at a time.

As he thought these things through, Galliard had been idly scanning the forward horizon. A moment ago - if only for a moment - he'd caught sight of something in direct line ahead. The fact hadn't made a great impact on him; shipping of one sort or another can be found any time in Mediterranean waters, and just about anywhere. Anyway, it had been a flash of white on a glittering surface . . . maybe a dolphin had leaped clear of the water and the splashdown had caught his eye. But

Purser Galliard stepped to one of two telescopes mounted on the rail and focused ahead. For a while there was nothing, but then . . . now what was that? A Greek caique? Just sitting there, all these miles from the nearest island? Nothing peculiar about the boat itself; the islands were full of them - like gondolas in Venice - but they usually stuck pretty close to shore. This one looked becalmed, and it simply shouldn't have been there.

The canopied boat was maybe three-quarters of a mile ahead - but dead ahead - and it definitely wasn't moving!

Galliard took out his on-board communicator and pressed 'one' for the bridge three decks higher. His call sign was recognized, and a voice answered, 'Bridge. What can we do for you, Purser Bill?' It was Captain Geoff Anderson, informal as ever.

'You might try swinging her a tad to port and calling full stop on all engines,' Galliard told him at once. 'We're about a minute and a half from running someone down!'

Wait,' came the terse answer, and ten seconds later: 'Well done, Purser Bill. We would have seen and cleared her okay, but if they need help we'd have had to slow down and come about. So you've saved us some time and a little embarrassment, possibly. Now for your trouble you can arm yourself with a hailer and get down starboard onto B deck, okay?'

'Aye, aye, Cap'n,' Galliard answered with a grin, heading at the double for his office amidships. After only a few paces, he was gratified to feel the gentle shudder of a sudden deceleration, the barely noticeable shifting underfoot as the Star began veering a few degrees to port . . .



From just below the surface of B deck (the vessel's basement) a section of the hull had been rotated outwards to form stairs. And from the bottom step, Purser Bill Galliard threw out a line to the tatteredlooking man in the shade of the caique's canopy. Accompanied by three stewards and a deckhand, Galliard watched as the figure of the man in the caique made fast the line, then began to haul his boat in alongside.

'That's okay,' Galliard called out. 'I'll do that. You just sit tight.'


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Water,' the shaded, crumpled-seeming man answered him, his voice a dry croak. 'The lady and I . . . we're burning up.'

A lady? That must be the second figure, lying supine between the thwarts. Even as Galliard drew the caique alongside, he saw her jewelgreen eyes flicker open to fix his own, in the moment before a luminous glow suffused her face, making it indistinct. And:

God, sbe's beautiful! he thought . . . before wondering where that idea had come from, since as yet she was barely visible in the shade of the boat's canopy, which made a jet-black contrast with the blinding sunlight.

'Shade,' said the gaunt, ragged figure of the man, standing hunched under the canopy. 'The sun. We have . . . suffered!'

'We have juice,' said Galliard, passing a pitcher down. 'Sip a little. It will ease your throats, give you strength. But how long have you been out here?'

'Too long,' said the other, sipping and passing the pitcher to the woman, then reaching out a hand to Galliard. 'Help me to get her up there.'

The purser took his hand, and felt its chill. Strange, on a day as hot as this to feel a hand so cold. Stranger by far that the hand seemed to smoke in the sunlight! But Galliard was much too busy, too concerned, to wonder about the apparent contradictions here. The woman was heavily muffled; wrapped head to toe, she seemed almost mummified as she struggled to her feet, tottering where she emerged into the light. Galliard leaned forward, held to the rail with one hand and caught her round her slender waist with the other. She stepped - was lifted up - from the boat to the stairs, and her man-friend close behind, apparently eager to enter into the shade of the ship.

'But what on earth happened here?' Galliard enquired, as he and the stewards assisted the pair up into the ship and towards the elevators, and the deckhand left to go about his business. 'I mean, that you got into trouble, adrift way out here?'

'We ran out of fuel,' said the man, throwing off the jacket he'd been using to cover his head. 'We were taken by an unusual tide off Krassos. We used up our fuel trying to get back to the island. A little jaunt turned into a nightmare.'

His story sounded incredible: that even in this mad El Nino summer they'd been lost in the Aegean - adrift and going unnoticed through all the regular shipping routes - long enough to have become so dehydrated and so badly burned. But on the other hand it must be true, for the condition of the pair admitted of no other explanation.

Galliard looked sideways at the tall, dark, would-have-been handsome man; 'would-have-been' because the skin was peeling from his blackened


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