"Janet & Chris Morris - Threshold" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris Janet E)

light-minutes between him and the station, and not even STARBIRD could chance anywhere near half-light speed among th
complex of gravity wells that made up the inner solar system. She'd be torn apart.
South's message would get there at light speed, lots faster than he could, but at least they'd know he was on his way. Yo
could say "mission accomplished," at this point. He listened to the AI's communication and added those two words: "Tell 'em
mission accomplished, Birdy."
It sounded funny in his ears. Maybe because of the helmet's close confines, visor down. He clicked his faceshield up, an
flight deck was suddenly less polarized.
South was rubbing his eyes again, still blinking. He was seeing a ghost image of his own, haloes around letters and numb
toggles and keys, when he looked at them. But that had been happening for a while.
It was thinking about the mission, maybe, that made his voice funny. The mission was accomplished, you bet. But every
he thought about it, he kept itching in the back of his brain. His heartbeat would race, and his suit would get all concerned a
jab him with mood elevators and its damned physiology package would come to life, recording his galvanic skin response to
stress and he didn't know what-all.
Yeah, he did know what-all. On take off, his pulse rate in STARBIRD had been fifty-eight. He'd been proud of that. Jum
into oblivionтАФthe first guy to do it for real, rather than a quick in-and-out punch that wasn't any more than a roller-coaster
for a couple of chimpanzeesтАФhe'd racked up a hot eighty-eight.
But every time he thought back to his flyby of X-3, the star system in question, his pulse rate shot to one-twenty, he bega
sweat, and his ears rang. The evaluation team was going to have fun with that set of responses when he got Birdy parked
had a long time to think, and he figured he'd skip telling them about the memory blackout parts, since he might be imagining
them. Like the bad dreams he'd had out there (dreams of walking on a planet when he'd never left the ship), the blackouts
phantasms. Had to be, because otherwise, he wouldn't be spiking his physiology meters.
Joe South was a great test pilot because nothingтАФnothing whatsoeverтАФspiked him. Except weird sponge dreams and ol
dreams about the Central African warтАФdreams about being shot down in his ATF and running around in the jungle trying
evade the Africans, and getting caught, and being a POW and, finally, being traded out. You didn't let your Space Comman
pilots waste away in the detention camps. . . .
The jungle on the planet in his dreams was sort of like that African jungle, but the alien detention camp was lots nicer, an
dream aliens had bigger eyes even than the blacks in Mozambique. But Mozambique had really happened, and nothing had
shaken him since then, except dreams about it.
Joe South should have died in Africa. He'd known it then. He'd never forgotten it. Test pilots were made from fighter pil
who figured they were indestructible because they were on borrowed time, should-be-dead men who were sure that God h
given them Get-Out-of-Jail-Free cards, and South had won Test Pilot of the Year three years running.
He'd win it again, if he could just get through the physical on the other end of this mission and get back in the game. This
mission would put him way ahead in the standings.
And he had plenty of time to practice biofeedback controls of his erratic pulse rate and whatever else he neededтАФmonth
easy cruising toward the little blue-green ball on his lidar.
So maybe he should get some sleep, give Birdy her head, and see how he felt once the transient jump effects wore off. I
had the dreams again, complete with flowers and sunsets like he'd never seen in his life, and soft-skinned aliens with wide
and sad mouths, then maybe he could get used to it. Ten years as a fighter jock and five more as a test pilot had taught Sou
that you could get used to most anything.
"Birdy, I'm going off-line. Maintain present heading." He didn't have to talk to the AI, he'd just gotten used to doing it. He
canted his couch back, not bothering to take off his suit, or even his helmet, let alone go aft where he could shower and sha
and sleep in his bunk. You could get used to anything.
He wanted to let the suit's system, rather than the bunk's system, monitor his condition while he slept. You personified, in
space. He'd personified the suit into a buddy, and the ship into a command chain, representative of Space Command. He k
it, and he knew it was a little wacky, trusting your suit more than your ship. But it had been a wacky mission.
Part of the trouble with his memory, which the medics had predicted, was remembering the jump phase stuff, and the dir
post-jump phase stuff. You were in a different time dimension than your biology was built to handle. What was good about
was that he hadn't come back an old, shriveled, incontinent geriatric. What was bad, everybody at Mission Control was wa
to find out.
One bad thing was going to be coming home eighteen months later and seeing everybody againтАФseeing his buddies with