"Jack McKinney - Kaduna Memories" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinney Jack)

replacementтАФa tedious undertaking under the best of circumstances.

With a newfound sense of wonder, Thaish regarded the yellow sun cornered in the cabin's exterior
viewport. Just where in time had Ship Nasst emerged?
It was possible of course that one of the convoy transports had monitored their distress and followed
them out of jaunt

It was certainly to be hoped, since communication with the convoy could be achieved only in jaunt.

And it was certainly what everyone opted to believe when, a moment later, the monitors announced
detection of an artifact in near space.

Thaish watched, singularly attentive, as the object began to take shape in the renewed viewsphere. When
it had taken final form amid the cratered debris that littered the sector, a sound of collective puzzlement
filled the drive center.

The artifact wasn't a convoy transport; nor did it resemble any transport Ship Nasst had ever
encountered. The Inheritor Major immediately ordered a comparison study, but the communications
nodes in Interface Assist were unsuccessful in matching the alien ship's elongated styling, cone-like drive
ports, and oddly shaped appendages and protuberances to anything logged in the data library.

Three of the communications nodes shared peer-status with Thaish, and he pitied them their failure. It
seemed likely that half the ship would be on file before the jaunt was completed.

"Does the artifact respond to us?" Nasst asked at last.

"We can easily command it approach if so desired," one of the nodes answered.

The Inheritor Major made perceptible sucking noises with his lips, echoing the sounds by lifting one foot
then the other in a demonstration of impatience. "Is it not something to be desired, then?" He indicated
the viewsphere's data bars. "The object is obviously possessed of sufficient energy to secure us a return
to jaunt."

Thaish analyzed the Inheritor's command voice, mimicking the tonalities in private thought. Such was the
manner of behaving in the world, he told himself, when one desired to attain sure results: confidently,
assertively, loud-voiced.

"There is no lack of energy," the same node replied, "but it derives, Inheritor Major, from positron
plasma and nuclear fusion."

Someone shrieked, and Thaish saw several among his peer group adopt squatting, pre-deanimate
postures. He was fully prepared to follow them into voluntary life suspension, but Nasst barked everyone
upright and reattentive.

"A protohistorical curiosity," Nasst said, certain of himself, "but nothing we need fear. A factory ship, one
might speculate. A relic, perhaps, from the eon of the !Reitth themselves."

"A weapon," the drive circle leader offered, nervous as a Station Six node. "Why else antimatter and
nuclear fusion?"