"Michael Moorcock - The Black Corridor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

In the solid blackness it gives off faint light. In that great life-
denying void it contains life.

A few wisps of gas hang on it; a certain amount of its own waste
matter surrounds it: cans and packages and bits of paper, globules
of fluid, things rejected by its system as beyond reconstitution.
They cling to its sides for want of anything better to cling to.

And inside the spacecraft is Ryan.

Ryan is dressed neatly in regulation coveralls which are light
grey in colour and tend to match the vast expanse of controls, pre-
dominantly grey and green, which surround him. Ryan himself is
pale and his hair is mainly grey. He might have been designed to
tone in with the ship.



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Ryan is a tall man with heavy grey-black eyebrows that meet
near the bridge of his nose. He has grey eyes and full, firm lips that
are at the moment pressed tightly together. He seems physically
very fit. Ryan knows that he has to keep himself in shape.

*

Ryan paces the spaceship. He paces down the central passage-
way to the main control cabin and there he checks the coordinates,
the consumption indicators, the regeneration indicators and he
checks all his figures, at length, with those of the ship's computer.

He is quietly satisfied.

Everything is perfectly in order; exactly as it should be.

Ryan goes to the desk near the ship's big central screen.
Although activated, the screen shows no picture. It casts a greenish
light on to the desk. Ryan sits down and reaches out towards the
small console on the desk. He depresses a stud and, speaking in a
clear, level voice, he makes his standard log entry:

'Day number one thousand, four hundred and sixty three.
Spaceship Hope Dempsey en route for Munich 15040. Speed holds
steady at point nine of c. All systems functioning according to
original expectations. No other variations. We are all comfortable.

'Signing off.