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

Stump, and logged a course for space-end, ETD five days
hence. Shebat would have her dream dancers, though it
would take two cruisers to fetch them.

The Marada hastened to tell her all his good news.
Reaching out, he found something strange and biological
going on in Shebat. Her distress was in check, familiar;

her tears he had endured before. Outboards' emotions
were mysterious, yet, though he was beginning to under-
stand their logicЧbut this strangeness in Shebat was born
of neither emotion nor logic.

She sat, in her cave, talking to a nonoutboard in scanty
clothing, her words much calmer than her thoughts.

21

EARTH DREAMS

Scanning her physical readout, the Marada noted that
her inner layer of mil, which outboards sprayed upon
their forms to protect them, had been penetrated, sub-
verted. It would not do to go into sponge until she had
had her pressure linings refurbished. Outboards were
fragile. He considered the odd breaching of her seals,
decided that Chaeron must have done it, and queried the
DanaeЧwho, through her pilot, had engaged in infernal
interface with her nonpilot owner, many timesЧas to
why Chaeron had compromised Shebat's protections.

In the Marada's empty control room, a visual came up
on the corn-line monitor: Raphael Penrose's curly head
swinging round in miniature, "He did what? Marada, is
Shebat all right?"

Then Chaeron Kerrion's face crowded into the moni-
tor, auburn brows drawn into a tight, jagged line. "Mar-
ada, what do you mean, 'subverted her seals'?"

And when the Marada explained what he had seen, the
tiny Kerrion-replica smiled, then rubbed its stubbly jaw.
When his hand came away, Chaeron said gravely to
Marada that it was good that the cruiser was keeping
such a close watch on Shebat, but nothing was amiss with
her that could not be easily repaired by a mil-fitter, that
such things happened every now and again, and indicated
to his pilot that the interview was over.

But the Marada heard the pilot ask Chaeron, "Do you