"Rocklynne, Ross - Time Wants a Skeleton" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rocklynne Ross)

Five minutes later, Overland was stretched on the bed, pain in his open eyes. Three ribs were broken. Erie Masters hovered at the foot of the bed, dabbing at one side of his face with a reddened handkerchief, a dazed, scared look in his eyes. Tony knew what he was scared of, but even Tony wasn't playing with that thought now.
He found a large roll of adhesive in the ship's medicine closet. He taped Overland's chest. The breaks were simple fractures. In time, they would do a fair job of knitting. But Overland would have to stay on his back.
Masters met Tony's eyes reluctantly.
"We'll have to get pressure suits and take a look outside."
Tony shrugged. 'We won't need pressure suits. We're already breathing outside air, and living under this planet's atmospheric pressure. The bulkheads must be stowed in some place."
Overland's deep voice sounded, slowly. "I think we've got an idea where we are, Erie. You can feel the drag of this planetЧa full-size planet, too. Maybe one and a half gravities. I can feel it pulling on my ribs." A bleak expression settled on his stubbled face. He looked at Tony humorlessly. "Maybe I'm that skeleton, son."
Tony caught his breath. "Nonsense. Johnny Braker's wearing the ring. If anybody's that skeleton, he is. Not that I wish him any bad luck, of course." He nodded once, significantly, then turned toward the door with a gesture at Masters. Masters, plainly resenting the soundless command, hesitated, until Laurette made an impatient motion at him.
They prowled through the gloomy corridor toward the small engine room, pushed the door open. The overpowering odor of ozone and burning rubber flung itself at them.
Masters uttered an expressive curse as Tony played a beam over what was left of the reversed Fitz-Gerald Contraction machinery. His nails clicked startlingly loud in the heavy silence.
"Well, that's that," he muttered.
"What d'you meanЧthat's that?" Tony's eyes bored at him through the darkness.
"I mean that we're stuck here, millions of years ago." He laughed harshly, unsteadily.
Tony said without emotion, "Cut it out. Hasn't this ship got auxiliary rocket blasts?"
"Naturally. But this is a one and a half gravity planet. Anyway, the auxiliary jets won't be in such good condition after a fifty-foot drop."
"Then we'll fix 'em," said Tony sharply. He added, "What makes you so sure it's millions of years ago, Masters?"
Masters leaned back against the door jamb, face as cold and hard as stone.
"Don't make me bow to you any more than I have to, lieutenant," he said ominously. "I didn't believe your story before, but I do now. You predicted this crack-upЧit had to happen. So I'm ready to concede it's millions of years ago; mainly because there wasn't any one and a half gravity planet within hundreds of millions of miles of the asteroid belt. But there used to be one."
Tony said, lips barely moving, "Yes?"
"There used to be oneЧbefore the asteroids."
Tony smiled twistedly. "I'm glad you realize that."
He turned and went for the air lock, but, since the entire system of electric transmission had gone wrong somewhere, he abandoned it and followed a draft of wet air. He jerked open the door of a small storage bin, and crawled through. There was a hole here, that had thrust boxes of canned goods haphazardly to one side. Beyond was the open night.
Tony crawled out, stood in the lee of the ship, occasional stinging drops of rain lashing at their faces. Wind soughed across a rocky plain. A low roar heralded a nearby, swollen stream. A low kutakikchkut monotonously beat against the night, night-brooding bird, Tony guessed, nested in the heavy growth flanking a cliff that cut a triangular section from a heavily clouded sky. Light from a probable moon broke dimly through clouds on the leftward horizon.
Masters' teeth chattered in the cold.
Tony edged his way around the ship, looking the damage over. He was gratified to discover that although the auxiliary rocket jets were twisted and broken, the only hole was in the storage bin bulkheads. That could be repaired, and so, in time, could the jets.
They started to enter the ship when Masters grasped his arm. He pointed up into the sky, where a rift in the clouds showed.
Tony nodded slowly. Offsetting murkily twinkling stars, there was another celestial body, visible as a tiny crescent. "A planet?" muttered Tony.
"Must be." Masters' voice was low.
They stared at it for a moment, caught up in the ominous, baleful glow. Then Tony shook himself out of it, went for the storage bin.
Walking down the corridor with Masters, Tony came upon Braker and Yates.
Braker grinned at him, but his eyes were ominous.
"What's this I hear about a skeleton?"
Tony bit his lip. "Where'd you hear it?"
"From the girl and her old man. We stopped outside their room a bit. Well, it didn't make sense, the things they were saying. Something about an emerald ring and a skeleton and a cave." He took one step forward, an ugly light in his smoky eyes. "Come clean, Crow. How does this ring I've got on my finger tie up with a skeleton?"
Tony said coldly, "You're out of your head. Get back to the lounge."
Braker sneered. "Why? You can't make us stay there with the door broken down."
Masters made an impatient sound. "Oh, let them go, lieutenant. We can't bother ourselves about something as unimportant as this. Anyway, we're going to need these men for fixing up the ship."
Tony said to Yates, "You know anything about electricity? Seems to me you had an E.E. once."
Yates' thin face lighted, before he remembered his sullen pose. "O. K., you're right," he muttered. He looked at Braker interrogatively.
Braker said: "Sorry. We're not obligated to work for you. As prisoners, you're responsible for us and our welfare. We'll help you or whoever's bossing the job if we're not prisoners."
Tony nodded. "Fair enough. But tonight, you stay prisoners. Tomorrow, maybe not," and he herded them back into the lounge. He cuffed them to the guide rail, and so left them, frowning a little. Braker had been too acquiescent.
The reason for that struck Tony hard. Walking back along the corridor, he saw something gleaming on the floor. He froze. Revulsion gripping him, he slowly picked up the ring.
Masters turned, said sharply, "What's up?"
Tony smiled lopsidedly, threw the ring into the air twice, speculatively, catching it in his palm. He extended it to Masters.
"Want a ring?"
Masters' face went white as death. He jumped back. "Damn you!" he said violently. "Take that thing away!"
"Braker slipped it off his finger," said Tony, his voice edging into the aching silence. Then he turned on his heel, and walked back to the lounge. He caught Braker's attention.
He held the ring out.
"You must have dropped it," he said.
Braker's lips opened in a mirthful, raucous laugh.
"You can have it, copper," he gasped. "I don't want to be any damned skeleton!"