"Niven, Larry - Rammer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

He found one more chance to talk to the checker. "A three-hundred-year round trip-maybe two hundred, ship's time," said Corbett. "I get some advantage from relativity. But Pierce, you don't really expect me to live two hundred years, do you? With nobody to talk to?"

"The cold sleep treatment-"

''Even so.

Pierce frowned. "You haven't studied medicine. I'm told that cold sleep has a rejuvenating effect over long periods. You'll spend perhaps twenty years awake and the rest in cold sleep. The medical facilities are automatic; I'm sure you've' been instructed how to use them. They are adequate. Do you think we'd risk your dying out there between the stars, where it would be impossible to replace you?"

''No.''

"Was there anything else you wanted to see me about?"

"Yes." He had decided not to raise the subject. Now he changed his mind. "I'd like to take a woman with me. The life-support system would hold two of us easily enough. I worked it out. We'd need another cold sleep chamber, of course."

For two weeks this had been the only man Corbett could talk to. At first he had found Pierce unfathomable, unreadable, almost inhuman. Since then he had learned to read the checker's face to some extent.

Now he watched Pierce decide whether to terminate Jerome Corbett and start over.

It was a close thing. But the State had spent considerable time and effort on Jerome Corbett. It was worth a try. And so Pierce said, "That would take up some space. You would have to share the rest between you. I do not think you would survive, Corbett."

"But-"

"Look here, Corbett. We know you don't need a woman. I you did you would have taken one by now and we would have wiped you and started over. You've lived in the dormitory for two weeks and you have not used the loving bunk once."

"Damn it, Pierce, do you expect me to make love in public I can't."

"Exactly."

"But-"

"Corbett, you learned to use the toilet, didn't you? Because you had to. You know what to do with a woman but you are one of those men fortunate enough not to need one. Otherwise you could not be a rammer."

If Corbett had hit the checker then he would have done it knowing that it meant his death. And knowing that, he would have killed Pierce for forcing him to it.

Something like ten seconds elapsed, during which he might have done it. Pierce watched him in frank curiosity.

When he saw Corbett relax he said, "You leave tomorrow, Corbett. Your training is finished. Goodbye."

And Corbett walked out.

The dormitory had been a test. He knew it now. Could he cross a narrow bridge with no handrails? Then he was not pathologically afraid of falling. Could he spend two hundred years alone in the cabin of a starship? Then the silent people around him, five above his head, thousands to either side, must make him markedly uncomfortable. Could he live two hundred years without a woman? Surely he must be impotent.

He returned to the dorm after dinner. They had replaced the bridge with a nearly invisible slab of glass.

Corbett snarled and crossed ahead of the guard. The guard had to hurry to keep up.

He stood between two walls of occupied bunks, looking about him.. Then he did a stupid thing.

He had already refrained from killing the checker. He must have decided to live. What he did, then, was stupid. He knew