"George R. R. Martin - Override" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

blow, though he did not touch a tool.
Forty feet down the cave, Cochran and his crew had unpacked and set to work. But Kabaraijian
was barely conscious of them, though he could hear the hum of their vibrodrills and the hammering of
their picks. His mind was with his corpses, chipping at his wall, alert for the telltale grayish glitter of a
swirlstone node. It was draining work; demanding work; tense and nervous. It was a labor only corpse
crews could do with real efficiency.
 They'd tried other methods a few short years before, when men had first found Grotto and its caves.
The early settlers went after swirl-stones with automoles, tractor-like rockeaters that could chew up
mountains. Problem was, they also chewed up the fragile, deep-buried swirlstones, which often went
unrecognized until too late. The company discovered that careful hand labor was the only way to keep
from chipping or shattering an excessive number of stones. And corpse hands were the cheapest hands
you could buy.
Those hands were busy now, tense and sweating as the crew peeled whole sections of rock off the
broken wall. The natural cleavage of the stone was vertical, which sped the work. Find a crackтАФforce in
a pickтАФlean back and pullтАФand, with a snap, a flat chunk of rock came with you. Then find a new
crack, and begin again.
Kabaraijian watched unmoving as the wall came down, and the pile of green stone accumulated
around the feet of his dead men. Only his eyes moved; flicking back and forth over the rock restlessly,
alert for swirlstones but finding nothing. Finally he pulled the corpses back, and approached the wall
himself. He touched it, stroked the stone, and frowned. The crew had ripped down an entire layer of
rock, and had come up empty.
But that was hardly unusual, even in the best of caves. Kabaraijian walked back to the sand's edge,
and sent his crew back to work. They picked up vibrodrills and attacked the wall again.
Abruptly he was conscious of Cochran standing beside him, saying something. He could hardly make
it out. It isn't easy to pay close attention when you're running three dead men. Part of his mind detached
itself and began to listen.
Cochran was repeating himself. He knew that a handler at work wasn't likely to hear what he said the
first time. "Matt," he was saying, "listen. I think I heard something. Faintly, but I heard it. It sounded like
another launch."
That was serious. Kabaraijian wrenched his mind loose from the dead men, and turned to give
Cochran his full attention. The three vibrodrills died, one by one, and suddenly the soft slap of water
against sand echoed loudly around them.
"A launch?"
Cochran nodded.
"You sure?" Kabaraijian said.
"UhтАФno," said Cochran. "But I think I heard something. Same thing as before, when we were
moving through the caves."
"I don't know," Kabaraijian said, shaking his head. "Don't think it's likely, Ed. Why would anyone
follow us? The swirlstones are everywhere, if you bother to look."
"Yeah," Cochran said. "But I heard something, and I thought I should tell you."
Kabaraijian nodded. "All right," he said. "Consider me told. If anyone shows up, I'll point out a
section of wall and let him work it."
"Yeah," Cochran said again. But somehow he didn't look satisfied. His eyes kept jumping back and
forth, agitated. He wheeled and walked back down the sand, to the section of wall where his own
corpses stood frozen.
Kabaraijian turned back toward the rock, and his crew came alive again. The drills started humming,
and once more the cracks spread out. Then, when the cracks were big enough, picks replaced drills, and
another layer of stone started coming down.
But this time, something was behind it.
The corpses were ankle-deep in splinters of stone when Kabaraijian saw it; a fist-sized chunk of gray