"Kerrion Empire - 03 - Earth Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris Janet E)

not. He searched space-end's window because the
Erinys's distressed call, reporting Sofia's death, had
come from that vicinity, and because no cruiser could call
and be heard from spongespace. Therefore, only one rel-
atively small volume of real-time space could host the
wreckage: that around space-end's sponge-way. The
cruiser's sole purpose had been to deliver Sofia Spry's
party to the prison platform. Since Spry's death was clar-
ioned by the Erinys before it reached there, it was possi-

19

EARTH DREAMS

ble that the cruiser's pilot had eschewed continuance of
an aborted mission, turned around and headed his cruiser
back into sponge; but if this was so, all search was use-
less, and Ashera Kemon's perfect crime was complete,
non habeas corpusЧfor nothing had ever been heard
from the Erinys again./

The mighty Marada hoped that this was not the case,
that the Erinys had not entered sponge. From there,
even the most prodigious scrutiny could extract nothing:

what was tost in sponge, was lost forever. Once the
Marada had been lost in sponge, and only the most for-
tuitous happenstance of another cruiser passing by had
saved him.

The Marada's multispectrum gaze, boosted by every
cruiser and preamp station between him and space-end,
peered toward the sponge-hole, at no-time/no-space/mul-
tifaceted/immanent sponge. One could not be sure about
the lost cruiser, in any particular. It had been Ashera
Kemon's cruiser, newly commissioned three years past
but seldom spaced. It had a preeminent serial number
that changed all certainty to doubt: KXV 133.

Similitude-nose sniffing the space-end sponge-hole, the
Marada considered its own thought, and chose to seek
where nothing could rationally be expected to be found.
In his own stentorian voice that rang out over cruiser
consciousness like the 3K rumble from the dawn of time,
Marada called, broadband, to KXV 133.

And for an instant, before the quarry recovered itself
and faded fast, a cruiser's glib snout turned toward the
sound of its name, a wordless question-tickled the
Marada's circuits. Then it was gone, but Marada had