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

Half an hour to fall, and the X-force was over a gee. My sinuses were in agony. My eyes were
ripe and ready to fall out.. I don't know if I could have stood a cigarette, but I didn't get the
chance. My pack of Fortunados had fallen out of my pocket when I had dropped into the nose. There
it was, four feet beyond my fingers, proof that the X-force acted on other objects besides me.
Fascinating.

I couldn't take any more. If it dropped me shrieking into the neutron star, I had to use the
drive. And I did. I ran the thrust up until I was approximately in free-fall. The blood which had
pooled in my extremities went back where it belonged. The gee dial- registered one point two gee.
I cursed it for a lying robot.

The soft pack was bobbing around in the nose, and it occurred to me that a little extra nudge on
the throttle would bring it to me. I tried it. The pack drifted toward me, and I reached, and like
a sentient thing it speeded up to avoid my clutching hand. I snatched at it again as it went past
my ear, and again it was moving too fast. That pack was going at a hell of a clip, considering
that here I was practically in free-fall. It dropped through the door to the relaxation room,
still picking up speed, blurred, and vanished as it entered the access tube. Seconds later I heard
a solid thump.

But that was crazy. Already the X-force was pulling blood into my face. I pulled my lighter out,
held it at arm's length, and let go. It fell gently into the nose. But the pack of Fortunados had
hit like I'd dropped it from a building.

Well.

I nudged the throttle again. The mutter of fusing hydrogen reminded me that if I tried to keep
this up all the way, I might well put the General Products hull to its toughest test yet: smashing
it into a neutron star at half lightspeed. I could see it now: a transparent hull containing only
a few cubic inches of dwarf-star matter wedged into the tip of the nose.

At one point four gee, according to that lying gee dial, the lighter came loose and drifted
toward me. I let it go. It was clearly falling when it reached the doorway. I pulled the throttle
back. The loss of powerjerked me violently forward, but I kept my face turned. The lighter slowed
and hesitated at the entrance to the access tube. Decided to go through. I cocked my ears for the
sound, then jumped as the whole ship rang like a gong.

And the accelerometer was right at the ship's center of mass. Otherwise the ship's mass would
have thrown the needle off. The puppeteers were fiends for ten-decimal-point accuracy.

I favored the dictaphone with a few fast comments, then got to work reprogramming the autopilot.
Luckily what I wanted was simple. The X-force was but an X-force to me, but now I knew how it
behaved. I might actually live through this.

***



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