"Ringo,.John.-.Honorverse.SS.-.Mitchell,.Victor.-.A.SHIP.NAMED.FRANCIS" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ringo John)

"Tester," a nasally voice said over the enunciator, "spare us this
day from your Tests.

"Please, Tester, don't let any of the airlocks blow out. Let the
environmental system, old as it is, shudder though another day
of labor. Please, Tester, let the water recyclers make it through a
few more days, even though Engineering says they're just about
shot. Tester, please see fit to keep Fusion Two from terminally
overloading and blowing us all into Your arms; we love you but
we want to see our families again some day.


"Please, Tester, if you could maybe see clear to keeping the
compensator on-line? If we don't have the compensator, we
can't make our acceleration back home, and we'll drift in space,
a derelict, until the systems begin to fail and the power runs out
and the air gets foul and we all start eating each other . . ."

It continued in the same vein for a good fifteen minutes as the
quavering voice slowly worked its way through every imaginable
disaster scenario.

Spaceships were, inherently, disasters waiting to happen. It was
one of the main reasons that "the bug" was a problem; any
reasonably intelligent individual dealt with a certain amount of
"apprehension," as it was politely termed, as soon as he was out of
the atmosphere. Vacuum is very unforgiving stuff and even the
most advanced technologies could not make space truly safe.

But most people were polite enough not to mention that in public.
Much less broadcast it, in detail, over the enunciator.

He began to see why people tended to flip out on the Francis
Mueller. And he wondered, as he was getting dressed in the
crowded but mostly silent compartment, how much worse it could
get.



"What do you mean we're lost?"

Warrant Officer Kearns had just brought Tyler to the bridge to meet
the captain. The first words out of his new commander's mouth
were not ones to settle Sean's . . . apprehension.

Captain Zemet was incredibly handsome, with high cheekbones,
an aquiline nose and a chin that you could use to crack walnuts. He
probably could have been a holovid star with one exception; he
was short, even by Grayson standards. On Manticore the word
"dwarf" might have been used. He was looking up at the not much