"Smith, E E Doc - 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. СDoc' 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
ponderous gray door. As far as she knew she'd done nothing wrong-but innocence was
not always an alibi in Lady A's court. The woman who ran this vast, galaxy-wide
conspiracy had been in a foul mood for the last six months, ever since the failure of
Operation Annihilate. All plans had been put into abeyance while the conspiracy was
evaluated from top to bottom and its goals reassessed. Things were now starting to
move again-but Tanya Boros didn't know what place she would fill in the new
organization, and that bothered her.

Nervously she inserted her comparison disc into the appropriate slot and put her eyes to
the viewer so the retina scope could check her pattern. Even after all the previous
precautions, no one was permitted into Lady A's office without undergoing one final
identity check; Lady A was too thorough for anyone to catch her unawares.

Boros's retinal patterns matched the ones on her identity card, which the door returned
to her. Then the heavy security portal swung slowly outward and Lady A said, "Come in,
Tanya. I've been expecting you." Tanya Boros obeyed.