"Jerry Pournelle - High Justice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pournelle Jerry)

and most of the crew was sick of it; now the voyage was over. She'd gouge out a hell of a hole
when she went aground, big enough to form a harbor for ships coming to the Namib, or at least
that's what the Company engineers had calculated. Nobody had ever tried making a harbor this way
before, although Antarctic icebergs were standard sources of fresh water. Anderson had commanded
three previous Hrelsvelgors, two to Los Angeles and one to Florida.


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"Beacon bearing 20┬░," a cadet called from his post on top of the berg.
Anderson nodded. "Standby anchors," he ordered. He turned to his charts. Looked like good holding
bottom here, and the depth sounder showed they were entering the hundred fathom line. Tricky
business, the anchors would be needed to hold the melting berg offshore after she grounded. He
could drop them now, or let the tugs take them out later. . . . "Drop stern one and two," he said
softly.
The iceberg moved onward. Anderson decided she was drifting off course and had the tug push
against her port side to hold her against the current. With the reactor shut down and secured
against the coming jolt he had no power.
The depth finder pinged alarm. It was shoaling rapidly now. "Let go numbers four, five, and seven
anchors! Tug clear away!" Anderson ordered. There was a long wait, one minute, two, then the first
shudder, another, grinding fury as the iceberg slid inexorably across the bottom toward the shore.
Steam boiled up from the ocean, steam and bubbles and mud as the four-mile-long mass ground to a
halt.
"Not so bad," the mate said. "No worse shock than I thought. "
"Reactor secure. All's safe," the bridge speaker announced.
"Anchors secure and holding fast."
"All motion stopped."
Anderson nodded in satisfaction. Just about where the Company wanted her, anyway. He began to
unscrew the brass nameplate above the wheel. "Hoist the black ball, Mister," he told the mate.
"And decommission the ship. She's not ours anymore. "
The executive jet whistled over the South Atlantic, dropping from its cruising altitude to a few
hundred feet. It was almost to the African coast when Bill Adams looked up to see Courtney
Graves's heart-shaped face and long blond hair. She smiled, then blushed slightly. Adams had
chosen her as his executive assistant a year before, and so far that's all she'd been, but she
could hope . . . only the man was married to his job! She wished he had time for something else,
not that it had been all work these past months. Bill Adams knew about entertainment, and in their
travels he took her to the most exotic shows in places no one had ever heard of. Sometimes he
bought her presents . . . but that's all he did, and yet she knew he didn't have another girl, and
his wife and daughter had left him ten years ago. His wife said she wanted a husband, not a
visiting father.
Adams stretched and ran long fingers through sandy hair that kept falling over his pale blue eyes.
Time for a haircut. "Got me some coffee, Courtney?"
"Yes, sir." She went forward to get it while Bill looked at the desolate African coast. The Namib
Desert, said to be one of the bleakest places on earth. Sure is, he thought. He looked ahead for
the Station.
The iceberg was the first thing he could see. Partly melted now, it was still huge, three miles of
ice angling out from the shore. One end of the berg was aground, the other held offshore by
anchors, creating a quiet, protected deep water harbor gouged out by the berg's fury when it
crashed ashore. Quite a concept, Adams thought. Too bad we can't patent it.