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

was part and parcel of it. When a cruiser and a pilot be-
come one, their concerns and perspectives merge. The
Marada could protect his pilot, succor her, love her. He
could not analyze her.

It would have taken some other pilot/cruiser pair, of
long acquaintance and unparalleled maturity, to intuit
the true situation and move to alter it before things got
out of hand. And, of all pilots, only Softa David Spry,
Shebafs erstwhile pilotry master, knew Shebat and the
Marada well enough. Spry, the finest pilot the Con-
sortium's empire ever produced, might have been able to
do it, had he been there, at the beginning, to see
Shebafs confusion and how her malaise short-circuited
the discriminatory abilities of her cruiser, KXV 134
Marada. Shebat's instructor, Spry, would have diagnosed
her as suffering from the truth behind the axiom that all
pilots are mad, and prescribed what remedies could be
tendered one who gives up normal life and quotidian val-
ues to merge with a spongespace cruiser and swim among
the stars. Spry had long warned Shebat that mortal con-
cerns would fall away from her, that new values and a
support-system for them must emerge, or she would per-

24

JANET MORRIS

ish, shorn of philosophical base, in the sponge between
the stars. He had told her: take what you will of pleasure
from your human fellows, but save your love for your
cruiser. She had heard, but not understood. Her philo-
sophical base, then, was yet that of an enchantress. As
this eroded imperceptibly in the cold light of Consortium
logic and the venality of her adopted Ken-ion dynasty's
concerns, she hardly noticed. Her cruiser, for much too
long (because he shared her thoughts but only audited
her emotions; because she was a dream dancer, Con-
sortium-taught; because her intellect was formidable
enough to suppress the emotional storm rolling under her
hard-held facade), could not determine where, in the
person of his beloved Shebat, the trouble lay. And, too,
to the cruiser and his pilot, what was happening was not
yet a problem, but the necessary deepening and strength-
ening of the cruiser/pilot bond.

Chapter Two

Despite his determination not to be overawed at
what even a disgraced Kerrion "failure" could accom-