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

proceed from the drop point through the Hype to just off Chabad. He would land _Zipper_ illegally, fly
his bubblecraft to Abanat, the planet's only city, and meet -- find, Dana had thought -- a dealer.

Half an hour ahead of him, with his dorazine in _Lamia_'s cooler and six years of experience in
Sardonyx Sector, Tori Lamonica was thinking about him, and laughing.

He scowled at _Zipper_'s walls. Then he punched instructions to the ship's computer, putting the
starship at half-gee gravity. Shedding his clothes, he jumped for the monkey bars. The smooth metal
bars, each a meter long and half a meter out from the wall, ran up one curving wall at intervals, like ladder
rungs, over _Zipper_'s ceiling and back down in a regular track to the other "side" of the continuous wall.
Hand over hand, Dana pulled himself along until his shoulder muscles ached and his ivory-yellow skin felt
oiled. He dropped lightly down, breathing hard. Climbing the bars was good exercise, and they were
remarkably useful when the ship went into null-grav. Better than magnets in free-fall.

Now -- what to do? He could return to Nexus. He was not _entirely_ without funds, and in a cache
in the wall he had a small stash of comine which it would not be hard for him to sell. Or -- he grinned --
he could go on to Chabad and try to run a doublejack on Tori Lamonica. He'd have to be crazy to
attempt it, inexperienced as he was and without a single contact in Abanat. The only thing that might
make it work was that Lamonica would not be expecting it....

And why not? His grin widened. He could try it. He'd never been to Chabad; he might as well see it.
It could be fun. He pulled his jumpsuit back on. The comine, still wrapped, sat snugly in its hole in a wall
panel. Grabbing it, Dana palmed the inner door of the lock, pushed the bagged powder through, closed
the door, and punched the button which released the outer lock door. He turned on the vision screen to
watch the comine go: transparent bags bursting, comine floating, granule by granule, into vacuum,
wreathing the ship. With no drugs onboard, he should have no trouble landing on Chabad's moon and
passing the inspection which he knew they would subject him to in Port. Clean as a cop or a tourist, he
would ride a shuttleship to Abanat, well ahead of Tori Lamonica taking the tortuous overland route from
her concealed ship in her bubblecraft. When she arrived in Abanat, looking for her dealer, he, Dana,
would be waiting for her.

He wondered if he should jettison the dorazine cooler. Its very presence on the ship would tell a cop
what he had really come to Chabad for. But, damn it, he'd paid five hundred credits for it, and besides,
he would need it if -- when -- the doublejack worked. They would suspect him, but they might do that
anyway, and so what if they did? Intent to commit a crime was not by itself criminal.

He touched a button on the computer console. Clear music lilted through the ship, obliterating the
hum of machinery. It was old music. It had been written by a man named Stratta during that strange and
joyful time after the Verdian ships touched on Terra. Dana had heard it on a street corner in Nexus. He
had practically had to shake the composer's name out of the startled street artist. He had never paid
much attention to music before, but this music was -- different: clear as a theorem, stirring and haunting.
He carried with him in _Zipper_ a collection -- perhaps the best collection that existed -- of Stratta's
pieces, on musictapes. They perfectly complemented his solitude.

He told the computer to find him the fastest course to Chabad. It blinked figures at him. The course
took three standard days: two in the Hype, a Jump from this into another hyperspace current, another
half a day in hyperspace, half a day through spacetime normal to Chabad's only moon. He told the ship
to use the course. He settled into the pilot's chair; the Drive came on. Spacetime normal went away.
Dana cleared the vision screen; from rainbow it darkened into the brutal, mind-capturing blackness of the
Hype. At an unimaginable distance, red dust glittered, the dust of dying stars, or of stars not yet born.