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

between the fusion tube and the tanks and other equipment, the blue stars glared at me with a
light that was almost violet. I was aftaid to look too. long. I actually thought they might blind
me.

There must have been hundreds of gravities in the cabin. I could even feel the pressure change.
The air was thin at this height, one hundred fifty feet above the control room.

And now, almost suddenly, the red dot was more than a dot. My time was up. A red disk leapt up
at me; the ship swung around me; I gasped and shut my eyes tight. Giants' hands gripped my arms
and legs and head, gently but with great firmness, and tried to pull me in two. In that moment it
came to me that Peter Laskin had died like this. He'd made the same guesses I had, and he'd tried
to hide in the access tube. But he'd slipped ... as I was slipping ... From the control room came
a multiple shriek of tearing metal. I tried to dig my feet into the hard tube walls. Somehow they


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held.

When I got my eyes open, the red dot was shrinking into nothing.

***

The puppeteer president insisted that I be put in a hospital for observation. I didn't fight the
idea. My face and hands were flaming red, with blisters rising, and I ached as though I'd been
beaten. Rest and tender loving care; that was what I wanted.

I was floating between a pair of sleeping plates, hideously uncomfortable, when the nurse came
to announce a visitor. I knew who it was from her peculiar expression.

"What can get through a General Products bull?" I asked it.

"I hoped you would tell me." The president rested on its single back leg, holding a stick thatg
gave off green incense-smelling smoke.

"And so I will. Gravity."

"Do not play with me, Beowulf Shaeffer. This matter is vital."

"I'm not playing. Does your world have a moon?"

"That information is classified." The puppeteers are cowards. Nobody knows where they come from,
and nobody is likely to find out.

"Do you know what happens when a moon gets too close to its primary?"

"It falls apart."

"Why?"