"Elizabeth Lynn - The Sardonyx Net" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lynn Elizabeth A)

The question was rhetorical and insulting but Dana decided to answer it anyway; he might learn
something. "I've been running comine," he said. "I thought I might make more credits working for The
Pharmacy."

"Sure," said Monk. "If you don't land in a cell." She took two steps to the pilot's chair, sat in it,
touched a button negligently. The screens came on. "Don't know why Tori wants your cargo, anyway.
Dorazine's not safe."

"What?"

"You haven't heard?" Monk tilted her head to one side. Even her eyebrows were shaved. "That new
top drug cop, A-Rae. He's snake-mean about the dorazine trade. Obsessed. The cops have left off
haunting drop points -- not that it ever did them any good. They're clustered down in Sardonyx Sector
off Chabad, picking runners up when they try to land, playing leapfrog along the spaceways."

"I hadn't heard about that," Dana admitted.

"The regulars are looking for other work," said Monk. She chuckled, and stretched her legs halfway
across the starship's floor. "The Pharmacy's _real_ unhappy."

All the regulars except Lamonica, Dana thought. He glanced at the starship's vision screen. It
showed the darkness of spacetime normal, mitigated by the pulsing light from a nearby Cepheid. The
yellow star had no planets, and that made it a convenient place for a drop point. There were hundreds of
such points scattered through the eight Federation sectors.

"Lamonica's going to Chabad," Dana said. It was not quite a question. Hypers did not ask each
other about other Hypers.

Monk yawned again. "She's got nowhere else to go. She's carrying dorazine." Her tone was weary
-- an expert, explaining something to a slightly stupid novice. Dana's temper flared. He turned and strode
to the lock which connected Monk's ship with his own. He slithered through it, graceful as all Hypers
were, balancing without thought as the floor rippled under his feet. Palming the hatchway plate, he waited
for the door to open, then grabbed the bar and swung within his starship's curving walls. The door slid
shut. He checked the seal...."Disengage," he said over the audio link.

_Zipper_ jogged as the other ship sucked back the lock tube. Dana watched in his screen as
_Treasure_ Jumped, going from silver-gray to blue, to green, to orange, to blazing red.... After the ship
vanished into the Hype, the rainbow emissions lingered in normal space.

The Cepheid pulsed, half a light-year away. Dana swore at it in Pellish. The day he'd been accosted
in Liathera's, the Hyper bar on Nexus, he'd thought the luck was at last turning to smile his way. Now it
seemed as if she were only playing with him.... He'd probably never get a chance to run dorazine again.
Now he could go back to the gamblers' runs -- running nightshade for the Verdians -- picking up two
hundred credits here, five hundred credits there, always watching his back for the Hype cops. Damn!
He'd lived like that for six standard months, loathing every insecure minute of it. It was a cheap, chancy
way to survive.
 Or -- he loathed the thought -- he could sell his ship, and work for some damn corporate fleet, no
longer Starcaptain but a simple pilot, taking the orders of some fish-brained, planetbound administrator.