"Andrew J. Offutt - Spaceways 17 - The Carnadyne Horde" - читать интересную книгу автора (Offutt Andrew J)

through their mlss outer coverings. The resulting burst of relieved pressure
masked the vaporization of flesh and bones. That the boiling plasma continued
through the three and punched a head-sized hole in the bulkhead beyond
bothered Tura ak Saiping not a bit. She had no need for the spacer. Only for
what it carried. "This way," Jarant Anstiss said in a terrified hiss. 6 The
pair drifted quietly down a corridor. Using the railing that bordered the
bulkheads and deck, they propelled their weightless forms hand over hand.
Since the relative directions of "up" and "down" varied depending on whether a
spacer was under thrust, rotating for artificial G, or decelerating, the rails
were on all sides. In zero-G, they provided a necessary means of
locomotion. Anstiss motioned to the younger man. They both stopped, ducking
into the recess of a hatchway. One of the cybernetic attackers-"robot," they'd
once been called-had made it into the pressurized area. It rounded a bend in
the tunnel and jetted past them. The hiss of its gas thrusters sounded like
the whisper of demons. From their hiding place, the Jarants saw the farrago of
armatures encircling the grayish-blue sphere. Halfway between the equatorial
ring of manipulators and the transceiver antenna at the axis rested a gleaming
black TP camera. When it no longer pointed in their direction, the first mate
let go a sigh. Before it rounded the next bend in the tunnel, the cyber
stopped dead in the air. Its TP detected motion. A crew-member rushed past the
junction, panicking and groping for the rail. The plasmer flared
diamond-white. A mass of charred and smoking flesh floated lazily in all
directions from where the woman had been. "Shiva's eyes," muttered the younger
man. "Indrasta!" "Too late for her. Go!" Captain Jarant kicked off the
bulkhead and raced down the tunnel hand-over-hand. Following him, the younger
Jarant gazed in dull amazement at Indrasta's drifting remains. As silently as
if they were already in vacuum, Anstiss overrode the computer control on the
airlock and cycled the hatch manually. The pearly surface (marred and
scratched by too many years of hauling cargo) slid aside. 7 The captain nodded
inside. His brown eyes held the sorrow of crushed ideals. A captain never left
his spacer. He knew that. He'd heard all the stories while growing up. He also
knew that more often than not, captains elected to desert their ships. The
reason was as old as the race called Gal-actics-where there was life, there
dwelt hope. A dead man, no matter how honorable, seldom recouped his
losses. That did not make Captain Jarant Anstiss feel any better about
abandoning his ship and what might be left of his crew. "In!" he cried,
kicking his son toward the lifeboat. He had heard the crackle of a plasma beam
hitting cyprium. The dropping pressure had already set his ears pounding as he
cycled the airlock shut. "We've lost the main tunnels," he said, and nothing
more. The pair climbed into the escape pod and set the controls to manual.
Jarant Kendis knew that the escape would be very nearly pointless. They were
light-years away from an inhabited planet. The lifeboat possessed simple
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chemical and ion engines. He only hoped that the pirate-whoever it was-would
leave Abraxis intact. The lifeboat had its own computer, one that could
operate independently of Abraxis's traumatized systemry. The captain used the
outside TP waldoes-large manipulators controlled manually from inside-to cycle