"E. E. Doc Smith - D' Alembert 8 - Eclipsing Binaries" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

ECLIPSING BINARIES

Volume eight of The classic Family d'Alembert series

By E.E. тАШDoc' Smith
With Stephen Goldin

Chapter 1
The War Against SOTE

Being summoned to Lady A's office was never a casual matter. Tanya Boros had
to pass
an ID and weapons checkpoint before she was even allowed into the elevator
tube taking
her down to the lowest basement level. There she passed a human-supervised
retina
scope check and a weapons detector scan. Then she had to walk alone down a
brightly
lit L-shaped corridor with camera eyes watching her every step of the way. The
walls
were gray and completely bare except for the innocuous-looking small
projections she
assumed were blaster barrels pointed directly at her.

As she turned right at the far end of the hallway, she came abruptly to the
heavy gray
magnisteel door that was the final barrier to Lady A's office. There were some
people-ones who had made serious mistakes on their assignments-who had gone
through this door and never been seen alive again, though admittedly such
cases were
rare. Lady A normally dealt with faulty subordinates in a more efficient
manner, letting
others on her staff do the dirty work. More often a visit to Lady A meant a
tongue-lashing
for some slipup, some operation that had gone less smoothly than planned even
if it was
ultimately successful. Most of Lady A's plans did go smoothly, but she was a
perfectionist and did not tolerate even minor faults in her hirelings.

Even at best, being called to this office merely meant another hard, demanding
job from
a taskmaster who was never satisfied. There was still much to do if the
conspiracy was
to topple the Stanley dynasty from the Imperial Throne, and Lady A could never
quite
understand why her inferiors did not measure up to her own impeccable
standards.

For all these reasons, Tanya Boros was understandably nervous as she stood
before the