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

but an utterly lifeless expanse of fine sand just crying to be planted with ornamental cactus.
We've tried that. The wind blows the plants away.

The ship lay on the sand beyond the roof. It was a No. 2 General Products hull: a cylinder three
hundred feet long and twenty feet through, pointed at both ends and with a slight wasp-waist
constriction near the tail. For some reason it was lying on its side, with the landing shocks
still folded in at the tail.

Ever notice how all ships have begun to look the same? A good ninety-five percent of today's
spacecraft are built around one of the four General Products hulls. It's easier and safer to build
that way, but somehow all ships end as they began: mass-produced look-alikes.

The hulls are delivered fully transparent, and you use paint where you feel like it. Most of
this particular hull had been left transparent. Only the nose had been painted, around the


file:///F|/rah/larry%20niven/Crashlander.txt (6 of 162) [1/14/03 8:12:05 PM]
 file:///F|/rah/larry%20niven/Crashlander.txt

lifesystem. There was no major reaction drive. A series of retractable attitude jets had been
mounted in the sides, and the hull was pierced with smaller holes, square and round, for
observational instruments. I could see them gleaming through the hull.

The puppeteer was moving toward the nose, but something made me turn toward the stern for a
closer look at the landing shocks. They were bent. Behind the curved transparent hull panels some
tremendous pressure had forced the metal to flow like warm wax, back and into the pointed stem.

"What did this?" I asked.

"We do not know. We wish strenuously to find out."

"What do you mean?"

"Have you heard of the neutron star BVS-1?"

I had to think a moment. "First neutron star ever found, and so far the only. Someone located it
two years ago by stellar displacement."

"BVS-1 was found by the Institute of Knowledge on Jinx. We learned through a go-between that the
Institute wished to explore the star. They needed a ship to do it. They had not yet sufficient
money. We offered to supply them with a ship's hull, with the usual guarantees, if they would turn
over to us all data they acquired through using our ship."

"Sounds fair enough." I didn't ask why they hadn't done their own exploring. Like most sentient
vegetarians, puppeteers find discretion to be the only part of valor.

"Two humans named Peter Laskin and Sonya Laskin wished to use the ship. They intended to come
within one mile of the surface in a hyperbolic orbit. At some point during their trip an unknown
force apparently reached through the hull to do this to the landing shocks. The unknown force also
seems to have killed the pilots."