"Robertson, R Garcia - Gone To Glory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robertson R Garcia Y)

Defoe part-time privileges on Spindle.

At the top of the stratosphere, the shuttle shifted her angle of attack.
Acceleration gave way to the gentle persistent push of gravity. Through the near
porthole Defoe saw the green-brown limb of the planet rising to greet him, edged
by a thin corona of atmosphere. Cloud puffs hung over blue splotches -- large
lakes or inland seas. Knocking around the Near Eridani, he had seen worlds
aplenty, some good, some bad, some merely uninhabitable. When humans first
arrived, Glory had been an airless husk, pitted with craters. Relentless
terraforming had made her almost liveable. No worse than New Harmony, Elysium,
Bliss, or any of a half-dozen made-to-order worlds. Either a shining success
story, or a case of hideous ecocide. As a pilot, Defoe had to believe in
terraforming --starships needed places to go.

The shuttle came screeching in for a horizontal landing. Millions of kilometers
of steppe, savanna, and lava desert allowed landing strips to be as long as you
liked. A groundhand undogged the hatch with a gleeful, "Welcome to dirtside,
land of enchantment -- where falls can kill you, beasts can eat you, and Thals
will snap your spine just to hear it pop. Watch your step, you are in two-thirds
g."

Defoe nodded. He was used to gaining thirty kilos every time he went down to
Glory. The strip was a study in spasmodic activity. Cargo pallets came dropping
down from orbit, braked by big silver chutes, raising yellow clouds of dust.
Semi-rigids landed and departed. SuperChimps sat like rows of sad monkeys, ready
to help with the unloading. It had been cocktail time on Spindle; here it was
early morning. Dun-colored hills stretched north and west of the field. Beyond
the electrified perimeter a solitary male moropus dug for steppe tubers. Hyenas
trotted past, giving the moropus wide leeway -- behind them, the Camelback
Steppe disappeared into endless distance.

Waiting at the bottom of the landing ladder was a uniformed woman. Tall and
athletic, with her steel-gray hair cut down to stubble, Ellenor Bat fie could
easily have looked half her age -- but she did not go for biosculpt or hair
toner. Taking life as it came, she expected the universe to do the same. Defoe
had dealt with Ellenor before, finding her as proud as Lucifer's aunt, a
no-nonsense reminder that AID stood for the Agency for Imperial Development.

She gave him a liquid hydrogen greeting. "Welcome to Glory. You missed your
briefing." Defoe confessed as much. Full-blown AID briefings were full of
glaring oversights and ass-backward assumptions -- besides, if the problem was
solvable from orbit AID would not have asked him down. But he listened dutifully
to the facts as Ellenor saw them. "We have a semi-rigid and crew more than forty
hours overdue. Orbital retort spotted the crash site in the TransAzur, Tuch-Dah
territory..."

"How many in the crew?"

"Three."