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

He relaxed in a chair that was not quite a contour couch. RNA solution dripped into him. The needle no longer bothered him-he never noticed it. The teaching screen held a map of his course, in green lines in three-space. Corbett had stopped wondering how the three-dimensional effect was achieved.

The scale was shrinking as he watched.

Two tiny blobs, and a glowing ball surrounded by a faintly glowing corona. This part of his course he already knew. A linear accelerator would launch him from the moon, boost him to Bussard ramjet speeds and hurl him at the sun. Solar gravity would increase his speed while his electromagnetic fields caught and burned the solar wind itself. Then out, still accelerating, to the stars

In the teaching screen the scale shrank horrendously. The distances between stars were awesome, terrifying. Van Maanan's Star was twelve light-years away.

He would begin deceleration a bit past the midpoint. The matching would be tricky. He must slow enough to release the biological package probe-but not enough to drop him below ram speeds. In addition he must use the mass of the star for a course change. There was no room for error here.

Then on to the next target, which was even farther away. Corbett 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 dwarves of the Sol type, an average 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 the speed of light. Three hundred years would pass on Earth, but Corbett would only live through two hundred years of ship's time-which implied some kind of suspended animation technique.

It didn't hit him the first time through, or 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 brightly enough to read if there had been any books. There were no windows.

Corbett 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 and two women talked in low voices. Corbett didn't know the language. He had been unable to find anyone who spoke English. He suspected that there were two shifts, that someone slept in his bunk, mornings-but he could prove nothing. The slippery sheets must be fantastically easy to clean. Just hose them down.

Corbett was desperately homesick.

The first few days had been the worst.

He had stopped noticing the smell. If something reminded him he could sniff the traces of billions of human beings. Otherwise the odor was part of the environment.

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 tamed 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 ankles, 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.

Corbett wanted to go home.

The idea was unreasonable. His home was gone and he would have gone with it without the corpsicle crypts. But reason was of no use in this instance-he wanted to go home. Home to Mirian, who long since must have died of old age. Home to anywhere: Rome, San Francisco, Kansas City, Hawaii, Brasilia-he had lived in all those places, all different, but all home. Corbett had been a born traveler, "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-this world of elbow-to-elbow mutes and utter slavery, this world of which he knew nothing-would have vanished when he returned from the stars.

Corbett 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. Read that: Not yet, not yet

He dozed.

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

Ah.