"Niven, Larry - A World Out Of Time - v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

Then on to the next target, which was even further away. Corbell watched . . . and he absorbed . . . and a part of him seemed to have known everything all along even while another part was gasping at the distances. Ten stars, all yellow dwarfs of the Sol type, an aver-

age of fifteen light-years apart-though he would cross one gap of fifty-two light-years. He would almost touch lightspeed on that one. Oddly enough, the Bussard ramjet effect would improve at such speeds. He could take advantage of the greater hydrogen flux to pull the fields closer to the ship, to intensify them.

Ten stars in a closed path, a badly bent and battered ring leading him back to the solar system and Earth. He would benefit from the time he spent near lightspeed. Though three hundred years would have passed on Earth, Corbel would only have lived through two hundred years of ship's time-which still implied some kind of suspended-animation technique.

It didn't hit him the first time through, nor the second; but repetition had been built into the teaching program. It didn't hit him until he was on his way to the exercise room.

Three hundred years?

Three hundred years!

III

It wasn't night, not really. Outside it must be midafternoon. Indoors, the dorm was always coolly lit, barely bright enough to read by if there had been books. There were no windows.

Corbell should have been asleep. He suffered every minute he spent gazing out into the dorm. Most of the others were asleep, but a couple made noisy love on one of the loving bunks. A few men lay on their backs with their eyes open. Two women talked in low voices. Corbell didn't know the language. He had been unable to find anyone who spoke English.

Corbell was desperately homesick.

The first few days had been the worst.

He had stopped noticing the smell. If he thought of it, he could sniff the traces of billions of human beings. Otherwise the odor was part of the background noise.

But the loving bunks bothered him. When they were in use he watched. When he forced himself not to watch he listened. He couldn't help himself. But he had turned down two sign-language invitations from a small brunette with straggly hair and a pretty, elfin face. Make love in public? He couldn't.

He could avoid using the loving bunks, but not the exposed toilets. That was embarrassing. The first time he was able to force himself only by staring rigidly at his feet. When he pulled on his jumper and looked up, a number of sleepers were watching him in obvious amusement. The reason might have been his self-consciousness or the way he dropped his jumper around his anides, or he may have been out of line. A pecking order determined who might use the toilets before whom. He still hadn't figured out the details.

Corbell wanted to go home.

The idea was unreasonable. His home was gone and he would have gone with it if it weren't for the corpsicle crypts. But reason was of no use in this instance. He wanted to go home. Home to Mirabelle. Home to anywhere: Rome, San Francisco, Kansas City, Brasilia-he had lived in all those places, all different, but all home. Corbell had been at home anywhere-but he was not at home here and never would be.

Now they would take here away from him. Even this world of four rooms and two roofs, elbow-to-elbow people and utter slavery, this world which they would not even show him, would have vanished when he returned from the stars.

Corbell rolled over and buried his face in his arms. If he didn't sleep he would be groggy tomorrow. He might miss something essential. They had never tested his training. Not yet, not yet.

He dozed.

He came awake suddenly, already up on one elbow, groping for some elusive thought.

Ah.

Why haven't I been wondering about the biological package probes?

A moment later he did wonder.

What are the biological package probes?

But the wonder was that he had never wondered.