"Paul J. McAuley - Winning Peace" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

falling around a failed star, six billion kilometers from the nearest human being,
Carver thought about what his brother had said on their last night together. Carver
had gone a little crazy when heтАЩd heard about his brotherтАЩs death because it had
been about as good and noble as an industrial accident. One machine had destroyed
another, and Jarred and the rest of the CroatianтАЩs crew had been incidental
casualties whoтАЩd had no chance to fight back or escape. It was a brutal irony that
JarredтАЩs death could help Carver win his freedom.

At last, the tug fired up its motor and slipped into a new orbit, creeping up
behind the escape pod, swallowing its black pip whole, then firing up again, a long
hard burn to achieve escape velocity from the brown dwarfтАЩs gravity well. It pinned
Carver to his couch for more than two hours. When it was over, following Mr.
KanzaтАЩs instructions to the letter, Carver suited up, went outside, and clambered
through the access hatch of the cargo bay.

The podтАЩs systems were in sleep mode; careful use of a handheld neutron
density scanner confirmed that apart from a !Cha tank, it contained nothing out of
the ordinary. If Dr. Smith and Useless Beauty had retrieved some-thing from the
brown dwarf, either it had been lost with their ship, or it was hidden inside the
!ChaтАЩs impervious casing.

Carver didnтАЩt attempt to contact the !Cha. He knew that his only chance of
escape lay in a narrow window of opportunity during the final part of the return
journey; until then, he wanted to keep his plans to himself. He fixed telltales inside
the cargo bay in case the !Cha decided to try to break out, locked it up, climbed
back inside the lifesystem, and sent a report to Mr. Kanza, and let the couch put him
to sleep.

****

Carver was supposed to remain in hypersleep until rendezvous with Mr. KanzaтАЩs
scow, but heтАЩd managed to reprogram the couch while prepping the tug. It woke him
twelve hours early, four million kilometers out from Sheffield.

The !ChaтАЩs tank was still inside the escape pod, the pod was still sealed in the
cargo bay, and the tug was exactly on course, falling ass-backward toward the gas
giant. In a little over two hours, it would skim through the outer atmosphere in a
fuel-saving aerobraking maneuver; meanwhile, the bulk of the planet lay between it
and the Ganesh Five facility and Mr. Kanza s scow.

Carver had less than an hour before Mr. Kanza regained radio contact with the
tug. While the tugтАЩs triumvirate of AIs threatened dire punish-ments Mr. Kanza had
not trusted them to carry out, Carver climbed into his pressure suit, blew open the
locked hatch using its explosive bolts, hauled himself to the cargo bay, and took just
under fifteen minutes to rig a bypass and crank it open and slide inside.

HeтАЩd dropped a tab of military-grade amphetamine (it had cost him fifty daysтАЩ
pocket money), but he was still weak from the aftereffects of hyper-sleep, dopey,
chilled to the bone. It took all his concentration to plug into the external port of the
escape pod, scroll down the menu that lit up inside his visor, and hit the command