"Mike Moscoe - Society of Humanity 03 - They Also Serve" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moscoe Mike)

Over the next several days, Mart's jumpmaster ran them out to the jump point with
ease, a feat in itself, since jump points orbited several star systems at the same time. If
you knew the right way to use the jumps, they took you to any one of them. If you didn't,
you could get lost forever. Matt trusted his jumpmaster, as well he should; Sandy
O'Malley was one of the reasons he was still alive. Ray watched from a bridge chair as
Sandy goosed the ship's engines the tiny bit needed for the jump.
Then every light on the bridge died as the ship slammed into a five-gee acceleration.
"What's happeningтАФ" Someone's cry was cut short as acceleration crushed air from
lungs.

Ray would have died right then, but Senior Pilot Rita had hammered into him that a
good passenger never took his finger off his seat controls. Ray had a fraction of a second to
switch his chair into high-gee mode before his back snapped.

Frozen in place, thoughts of Rita came. Rita, lecturing him on her ship's fusion engines.
"Electricity binds the fusion plasma demons. They want out, but we trick them into
making the very electricity that keeps them in by running the plasma through
magnitohydrodynamic coils when it shoots out of the reactor and into the engines.
Sneaky, aren't we?"

Ray had discovered the urge to kiss his pilot that day. As senior officer, he'd controlled
himself. Now, waiting to die, he wished he had a more passionate vision of his wife. But
Rita was passionate for her ship, and somewhere on Second Chance, Ray prayed an
engineering officer was just as passionately fighting to control the fusion before it was
exhausted, creating no electricity to keep the final burst from blasting the ship to atoms.

In the dark, Ray felt the acceleration slow; the ship could not have exhausted its
reaction mass this quickly. Something else was wrong. Beside Matt, his XO began tapping
her board. A dim light reflected from her face as at least one control station came up.
Without warning, the ship was in free fall. Ray sucked in a breath, waiting for the
explosion. It never came.
Matt's XO activated more boards, bringing the ship up slowly without its central net.
Ray missed most of their talk as he slipped a pain pill in to squelch the raw agony shooting
up his back. He didn't miss Matt's first question. "Where are we?"

"Nowhere near human space," Sandy answered.
"Communications, sir. We're getting a distress call."
 "Put it through," Matt snapped. Someone else in trouble!

"This is the explorer ship Santa Maria. We're abandoning ship. HelpтАФ" was followed
by static before the message repeated.
"Santa Maria!" Sandy breathed. "That was the first ship lost in a bad jump. Three
hundred years ago!"

"Sir, I've got a first report on this system."

"Helm, on the main screen." A schematic appeared. Five rocky inner planets. Four
outer gaseous ones. "We headed for any of those?" Matt asked.