"Maxine McArthur - Time Future" - читать интересную книгу автора (McArthur Maxine)

their distance, the Danadan visited only to trade.

A few refugees took advantage of the peace to seek safety with the
Confederacy, it is true, but one hundred years ago Marlena Alvarez
never turned refugees away and I was damned if I would now. Some trade
from the main jump routes began to spill over to us and representatives
of the sector's largest mercantile financier and the K'Cher trading
fleet opened offices on the station. Sector Central even sent a team
from the Audit Ministry to complain about our management structure.

All that changed in a few hours when the gray ships came.

"You really think it'll work?" Bill Murdoch leaned his elbows on the
table between us and kept his voice low. He is a big man, broad and
heavy-muscled, and his uniform always seems a little tight over the
shoulders.

"It's the best chance we've had for a while to send a message." I
stifled another yawn. I'd been working all night with the engineering
team to prepare the probe. The trouble was, I'd also been kept up the
night before that when the Seouras called. They send a certain signal
to the station when they want me over on the ship. As soon as the
signal comes, I go. The last session had been a long one, almost
twelve hours, leaving me feeling completely ragged.

Murdoch pushed his chair back and looked at me with
an expression that could have been either exasperation or concern.
"Hard night?"

"Two of them. I'm going back to my quarters." I stretched stiffly.
Joint pain is one of the side effects of the Seouras interaction.
Murdoch watched without comment as I flinched and rubbed. The
intensity of his round, dark gaze made me stop, embarrassed to be
revealing a weakness here.

The other officers got to their feet also, murmuring to each other.
They filled the room, which looked smaller in the light--the sky blue
of Earth Fleet the navy of Con Fleet Murdoch's olive-green Security
jacket, the brown suit of a civilian researcher in Astro, and Veatch's
slim, gray form. Jago's white-jacketed figure disappeared quickly--she
was on call at the hospital.

The other colors left space around Veatch's gray. It was a deliberate
snub. Veatch was a Melot, a "humanoid" species--how they hated that
phrase. They had essentially the same form as humans: bipedal,
forward-facing eyes, a respiratory system, etc." but they were one of
the four founding species of the Confederacy. There were nine other
member worlds/systems/species in the Confederacy, making a total of
thirteen, as well as dozens of affiliated worlds that were not formal
members but had economic or cultural ties with Confederacy worlds. The