"Andre Norton - Solar Queen 06 - Derelict For Trade" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

likely many. Had they somehow flown into an uncharted asteroid cluster?
Dane wondered. No, Steen Wilcox was too good for that.

As he watched the ordered haste of his fellow crew members at the
controls, Dane became aware of a presence near him, and a faint, pleasant
smell of lavender. He glanced up. The new medic, Rael Cofort, stood in the
bridge hatch just behind his seat, a watchful look in her changeable violet
eyes. So she too had to be on hand to see what happened.

It was something they had in commonтАФa thought that made Dane
vaguely uncomfortable. He turned his head to dismiss the thought, and
watched the farseeing sensors of the Solar Queen slowly paint a picture of
their course, while Wilcox's navputer oriented them.

"We're in the Mykos system, about twenty-five light-minutes from the
sun," the astrogator said presently. He worked his console a bit longer.
"No masses detected on courseтАФwe're about fifteen degrees above the
ecliptic." Then he paused, looked from his console readout to his keys and
back again. A chill seized Dane; it was rare to see the astrogator hesitate
like that.
 After another longer pause, without any change in his tone, Wilcox
pronounced a death sentence on their careers as Free Traders.

"Insufficient fuel to reach any port," he said.

No one spoke. The truth was there on the screen for everyone on the
bridge to see: they were billions of miles from where they had intended to
emerge, without enough fuel to brake their tremendous velocity in time to
bring them safely to the nearest port.

Dane cleared his throat, about to suggest they radio for help, but he
pressed his lips together. That was for the captain to say. The Old Man
knows as well as I do that the salvage fees would bankrupt us, he
thought.

But Jellico was not looking at the screen. He had turned slightly in his
pod, and was regarding Wilcox, his hard eyes narrowed in question.
"And?" he said.

Wilcox's shoulders hunched. "We're headed straight at the Mykos
cylomes at about five percent cee. Unless a salvage tug reaches us in
sixteen hours or less, the habitat defenses will blow us out of space."

For a moment nobody said anything, and Dane reflected bitterly on the
irony of their position. Few human Free Traders liked docking at the
artificial habitats called cylomesтАФthe cylindrical habitats favored by many
alien races outside the human sphere of influence. Unfortunately for the
Queen their low fuel situation had made the choice for them.

There'd been a lot of grousing in the mess-cabin strategy session when