"The Sails Of Tau Ceti" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCollum Michael)

УNegative. The message says Сin person.ТФ
УBut thatТs silly. DoesnТt he know how much work weТve got to do before next
monthТs launch?Ф
УI presume heТs been reading our progress reports.Ф
УThen he should know that software certification is a week behind schedule and
still slipping.Ф
УNo argument there, partner.Ф
Tory let her anger cool a moment.УDoes he say what this meeting is about?Ф
УNo. Shall I tell him you canТt make it?Ф
Tory shook her head. The habit of a lifetime was hard to break though Vance was
a kilometer distant and the conversation was taking place inside her
skull.УNegative. You know how fragile the coalition is. How long before the
afternoon shuttle leaves for Olympus?Ф
УTwenty seven minutes.Ф
УGet me a seat. Tell them to hold until I get there.Ф
#
The ground steward who helped passengers aboard the Phobos-to-Olympus shuttle
let his gaze linger on Tory Bronson as she made her way up the embarkation tube.
He saw an attractive woman of some 25 standard years. Like many Martians she was
tall and lithe, her alabaster skin unmarked by the sun. Her green eyes possessed
a barely discernable slant and her hair was so black that it shown with a blue
luster. She wore it in a hair net to keep it out of her face in PhobosТ
minuscule gravity field. He noted her pert nose set above a wide mouth, the
lines of which fell most naturally into a smile. She was not smiling now. She
had that absentminded look common to people deep in thought or those actively
accessing a computer implant.
Tory swarmed through the embarkation tube by pulling herself hand over hand,
ignoring the small moonТs two-tenths-percent of a standard gee. She found an
empty seat near a port and strapped down. Tory failed to notice the stares of
the other passengers as the steward went immediately into his pre-launch
briefing. She stared at her own dull reflection in the viewport and considered
what could possibly have triggered an emergency meeting of the project governing
board. Whatever had happened, one thing was certain. It could not be good news.
Almost as complex as the design ofStarhopper were the politics that went to
sustain it. The University of Olympus managed the project for a consortium of
institutions of higher learning. Funding was provided by several private
foundations and the governments of Mars, Lagrange 3 and four, and several
asteroid colonies. Several Earth megacorps had contributed to the project in the
hope of being chosen to provide materials and services. Some had, some had not.
It was an arrangement guaranteed to spark arguments. The prime function of the
governing board was to arbitrate disputes and to apportion costs equitably. They
also delved too much into decisions that, in ToryТs opinion, at least, should
have been left to the engineers.
Tory hoped she could divine the reason for the unexpected summons by reviewing
the minutes of the last several board meetings. She had hurriedly run through
them all the way to the spaceport. Her haste was necessitated by the fact that
her implant would not work once the ferry departed Phobos. The broadband
communications link would lose synchronization once the ferry passed beyond
effective transmitter range. Tory had gone through loss-of-sync once in
training. It was an experience she did not care to repeat.