"Incommunicado" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Katherine)

He gave only a few general directions after that, working rapidly while he talked over the phone as though trying to straighten everything singlehanded. He gave brief instructions on diverting the next swarm of parts and rocks coming up from the asteroid belt foundries, and then he swung his small tug in a pretzel loop around Pluto that tangented away from the planet in the opposite direction from PlutoТs orbital swing. The ship was no longer in a solar orbit at balance, solar gravity gripped it smoothly and it began to fall in steady acceleration.

УGoing to Station A,Ф Cliff explained over the general phone before he fell out of beam range. УIТm in a hurry.Ф

The scattered busy engineers nodded, remembering that as a good kinetics man Cliff could jockey a ship through the solar system at maximum speed. They did not wonder why he dared leave them without co-ordination, for every man of them was sure that in a pinch, maybe with the help of a few anti-sleep and think-quick tablets, he could fill CliffТs boots. They only wondered why he did not pick one of them to be his partner, or why he did not tape a fast course and send someone else for the man.

When he was out of beam range a solution was offered. УSurvival of the fittest,Ф said Smitty over the general phone. УEither you can keep track of everything at once or you canТt. There is no halfway in this co-ordination game, and no one can help. My bet is that Cliff has just gone down to see his family, and when he gets back heТll pick the man he finds in charge.Ф

They set to work, and only Cliff knew the growing disorder and desperation that would come. He knew the abilities of the men on his teamЧthe physicists, the field warp specialists, the metallurgists. There was no one capable of doing coordination. Without perfect co-ordination the project would fall apart, blow up, kill.

And he was leaving them. Gross criminal negligence. Manslaughter.

УWhy did you leave the project?Ф Spaceways Commission would ask at the trial.

УI would be no use there.Ф Not without Mike.



He sat in the stern of his ship in the control armchair and looked at the blend of dim lights and shadows that picked out the instrument panel and the narrow interior of the control dome. Automatically the mixture analyzed for him into overlapping spheres of light blending and reflecting from the three light sources. There was no effort to such knowledge. It was part of sight. He had always seen a confusion of river ripples as the measured reverberations of wind, rocks, and current. It seemed an easy illiterate talent, but for nineteen years it had bought him a place on Station A, privileged with the company of the top research men of Earth who were picked for the station staff as a research sinecure, men whose lightest talk was a running flame of ideas. The residence privilege was almost an automatic honor to the builder, but Cliff knew it was more of an honor than he deserved.

After this the others would know.

Why did you leave the project? Incompetence.

Cliff looked at his hands, front and back. Strong, clumsy, almost apelike hands that knew all the secrets of machinery by instinct, that knew the planets as well as if he had held them and set them spinning himself. If all the lights of the sky were to go out, or if he were blind, he could still have cradled his ship in any spaceport in the system, but this was not enough. It was not skill as others knew skill, it was instinct, needing no learning. How hard to throw a coconutЧhow far to jump for the next branchЧno words or numbers needed for that, but you canТt tape automatics or give directions without words and numbers.

All he could give would be a laugh and another anecdote to swell the collection.

УDid you see Cliff trying to imitate six charged bodies in a submagnetic field?Ф

Sitting in the shock tank armchair of the tug, Cliff shut his eyes, remembered BrandyТs remarks on borrowing trouble, and cutting tension cycles, and with an effort put the whole subject on ice, detaching it from emotions. It would come up later. He relaxed with a slightly lopsided grin. The only current problem was how to get Archy and himself back to Pluto before the whole project blew up.

He left his ship behind him circling the anchorage asteroid at a distance and speed that broke all parking rules, and he knew how much drain the anchorage projectors could take. They could hold the ship in for two hours, long enough for him to get Archy and tangent off again with all the ship momentum intact.

High speeds are meaningless in space, even to a lone man in a thin spacesuit. There was no sense of motion, and nothing in sight but unmoving stars, yet the polarized wiring of his suit encountered shells of faint resistance, shoves and a variety of hums, and Cliff did not need his eyes. He knew the electromagnetic patterns of the space around Station A better than he knew the control board of the tug. With the absent precision of long habit he touched the controls of his suit, tuning its wiring to draw power from the station carrier wave. As he tuned in, the carrier was being modulated by a worried voice.

УCanТt quite make out your orbit. Would you like a taxi service? Answer please. We have to clear you, you know.Ф

Cliff wide-angled the beam of his phone and flashed it in the general direction of Station A for a brief blink of full power that raised it to scorching heat in his hand. The flash automatically carried his identification letters.

УOh, is that you, Cliff? I was beginning to wonder if your ship were heaving a bomb at us. O.K. clear. The port is open.Ф In the far distance before him a pinpoint of light appeared and expanded steadily to a great barrel of metal rotating on a hollow axis. Inside, invisible forces matched his residual velocity to the station and deposited him gently in a storage locker.

Cliff passed through the ultraviolet and supersonic sterilizing stalls to the locker room, changed his sterilized spacesuit for clean white shorts, and stepped out onto the public corridors. They were unusually deserted. He managed to reach the library without exchanging more than a distant wave with someone passing far down a corridor.

There was someone in the reading room, but Cliff passed hurriedly, hoping the man would not turn and greet him or ask why he was there, or how was MikeЧ Hurriedly he shoved through a side door, and was in the tube banks and microfiles where the information service works were open to ArchyТs constant tinkering.

There was a figure sitting cross-legged, checking some tubes, but it was not Archy. It was a stranger.

Cliff tapped the seated figure on the shoulder and extended a hand as the man turned. УMy name is Cliff Baker. IТm one of the engineers of this joint. Can I be of any help to you?Ф