"Meadows, Chris - Visit to an Empty Planet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Meadows Chris)

bulkhead door, soiled and rusty from disuse. The man rubbed a
bit at it with his sleeve, and it revealed the words, "WORLDS
WELFARE WORK ASSOCIATION OPERATIONS CENTRE, NEW WALES," and
below it in smaller type, "Authorised Personnel Only."
The man detached something from his belt and unfolded it--it
was a standard Wedge Defense Force TR-580 personal sensor unit,
also known as a tricorder. The glow from the screen illuminated
the wielder's face as he programmed it with several finger taps
to its touch-sensitive control surfaces. The sensory
instrumentation at the top of the device also glowed, and the
standard scanning harmonic could be heard.
Holding the tricorder in his right hand, the man reached up
with his left to tap the small pin clipped to his breast pocket,
the pin in the shape of a red and gold Autobot symbol. "What do
you make of this, Temper?"
The sensory data in the tricorder's small 2.4-inch screen was
momentarily overlaid with the face of a rather pretty,
blonde-haired woman. "It looks like it hasn't been used in
years--decades, maybe!"
The man nodded. "Maybe there's no one here."
"Hope it hasn't been hit by scavengers..."
The man considered this for a moment. "Unlikely," he
decided. "The perimeter defenses were still active when we came
in, remember? Anyone without proper WDF or 3WA clearance codes
would get the Magrathea treatment. No, we should be able to find
the right stuff to fix your warpdrives in here."
"I hope you're right, Chris." The woman's face blinked off.
Chris used his fingernails to pry open a cover to the right
of the door, exposing controls and lights underneath it. He
pulled a fiber-optic cable out of a compartment on the tricorder.
"I'll link the tricorder to the locking mechanism, and we'll just
see if we can't get this thing open."
"Right...working on it now." The tricorder made some
whirring noises, and the door panel responded with a series of
sharp pings. "Got it. Should be opening at any moment."
With an ear-splitting screech, the bulkhead inched its way
open, separating into two sections that retracted left and right
into the walls. Retracting the cable and transferring the
tricorder to his left hand, with his right he pulled a
distinctive wedge-like shape from a holster on his belt--the
Gallant 1000 handgun, one of few like it in existance. A
modification on the Mars/Gallant H-90 handgun used by many
members of the Wedge Defense Force, it packed an impressive
amount of firepower in a rather small package.
"Be careful," Temper admonished him. "And keep scanning
constantly so I can see what's going on."
"Don't worry, Katie..." Chris replied. "Nothing's going to
get the drop on me."
"Hmph," Katie sniffed. "That's what Custer thought."