"Larry Niven - Crashlander (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

I heard the Laskins' last broadcast through half a dozen times. Their unnamed ship had dropped
out of hyperspace a million miles above BVS-1. Gravity warp would have prevented their getting
closer in hyperspace. While her husband was crawling through the access tube for an instrument
check, Sonya Laskin had called the Institute of Knowledge. "... We can't see it yet, not by naked
eye. But we can see where it is. Every time some star or other goes behind it, there's a little
ring of light. Just a minute. Peter's ready to use the telescope ..."

Then the star's mass had cut the hyperspatial link. It was expected, and nobody had worried --
then. Later, the same effect must have stopped them from escaping from whatever attacked them into
hyperspace.

When would-be rescuers found the ship, only the radar and the cameras were still running. They
didn't tell us much. There had been no camera in the cabin. But the forward camera gave us, for
one instant, a speed-blurred view of the neutron star. It was a featureless disk the orange color
of perfect barbecue coals, if you know someone who can afford to burn wood. This object had been a
neutron star a long time.

"There'll be no need to paint the ship," I told the president.

"You should not make such a trip with the walls transparent. You would go insane."


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"I'm no flatlander. The mind-wrenching sight of naked space fills me with mild but waning
interest. I want to know nothing's sneaking up behind me."

The day before I left, I sat alone in the General Products bar, letting the puppeteer bartender
make me drinks with his mouth. He did it well. Puppeteers were scattered around the bar in twos
and threes, with a couple of men for variety, but the drinking hour had not yet arrived. The place
felt empty.

I was pleased with myself. My debts were all paid, not that that would matter where I was going.
I would leave with not a minicredit to my name, with nothing but the ship ...

All told, I was well out of a sticky situation. I hoped I'd like being a rich exile.

I jumped when the newcomer sat down across from me. He was a foreigner, a middle-aged man
wearing an expensive night-black business suit and a snow-white asymmetrical beard. I let my face
freeze and started to get up.

"Sit down, Mr. Shaeffer."

"Why?"

He told me by showing me a blue disk. An Earth government ident. I looked it over to show I was
alert, not because I'd know an ersatz from the real thing.