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

take leave of absence from his post and Mr. Kanza was unwilling to risk his life, and
couldnтАЩt afford to hire a specialized, fully autonomous rescue drone because he was
more or less broke and had exhausted all his lines of credit. His lightly modified tug,
with Carver White riding along as troubleshooter, would have to do the job.

Carver learned all this while he helped Mr. Kanza prep the tug. He quickly
realized that even if he brought back something that made Mr. Kanza and Rider
Jackson the richest men alive, Mr. Kanza wouldnтАЩt keep his promise about freeing
him; if he was going to survive this, he would have to find some way of exploiting
the fact that he knew Mr. KanzaтАЩs story about holding Jarred hostage was a bluff. He
also realized that he didnтАЩt have much chance of taking control of the tug and lighting
out for somewhere other than the brown dwarf. He would be shut down in
hypersleep for most of the trip, and the tug was controlled by an unhackable
triumvirate of AIs that, sealed deep in the tugтАЩs keel, constantly checked each
otherтАЩs status. Not only that, but Mr. Kanza demonstrated with a ten-second burst of
agony that he had hidden a shock stick in the tug too, and could use it to stimulate
CarverтАЩs Judas bridge if it looked like he was going to cause trouble.
 CarverтАЩs last thoughts before hypersleep closed him down were about
whether he had done enough to make sure he could live through this; it was the first
thing on his mind when he woke some thirty-one days later, in orbit around the
brown dwarf.

The tug had discovered a scattering of debris, including hull plates, chunks of
a fusion motor, and a human corpse in a pressure suitтАФit was clear that Dr. Smith
hadnтАЩt survived the destruction of her shipтАФand it had also located the escape pod,
which was tumbling in an oblate orbit that skimmed close to the outer edge of the
brown dwarfтАЩs atmosphere before swinging away to more than twenty million
kilometers at apogee. A blurry neutron density scan snatched by a throwaway probe
revealed that the pod contained a !ChaтАЩs life tank, but its AI had refused to respond
to the tugтАЩs attempts to shake hands with it, and there had been no response to an
au-tomated hailing message either: there was no way of knowing if the !Cha, Useless
Beauty, was dead or alive.

The tug played a brief voice-only message from Mr. Kanza, telling Carver that
he was to suit up and go outside and retrieve Dr. SmithтАЩs corpse.

тАЬShe may be carrying something that will tell me what killed her. Also, her
relatives may pay a finderтАЩs fee for the return of her body.тАЭ

The tug was already matching delta vee with the body. By the time Carver had
sent an acknowledgment to the message (it would take five and a half hours to reach
Mr. Kanza), eaten his first meal since waking, and suited up, the tug and Dr. SmithтАЩs
corpse were revolving around each other at a distance of just a few hundred meters.

Carver rode across the gap on a collapsible broomstick. Ganesh Five B filled
half the sky, a dim red disk marbled by black clouds spun into ragged bands by its
swift rotation; Dr. SmithтАЩs corpse was silhouetted against the baleful light of this
failed star, tumbling head over heels, arms and legs akimbo. Her pressure suit was
ruptured in several places, and covered by fine carbon particles blown into space by
eruptions in the brown dwarfтАЩs magnetosphere; a fog of dislodged soot gathered