"Bud Sparhawk - Alba Krystal" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sparhawk Bud)

Alba Krystal
by Bud Sparhawk
There were eight of us assigned to the station when the greenies brought her in half-dead with fear and
cold, turned her over to Alice -- our station -- and left on their lizardy business.

Poor Alice hadn't been trained to be a nursemaid for an abandoned kid so all she did was get her in bed,
heat up the chamber a few degrees, and send out a call on the distress band for us to hurry-hurry home.

Hurry-hurry was just one thing we couldn't do. The seven of us were working deep that day -- down to
about twenty atmospheres -- and decompression back to station levels takes time, even for us
modifieds.

Needless to say we were all roundly cursing the greenies the whole time we guided our 'scaphs back to
the transport and stowed them in the recesses along each side of the monster ship. The stupid lizards,
leaving some poor human child to the mercies of Alice. What a stupid stunt.. "Damn them," we cried as
we sweated the transport up through the heavy atmosphere of the giant planet Grimm.

It was our own fault in a way, leaving the station alone. But what ever happens out here that requires a
human attendant to stay behind? Certainly a space station orbiting an out of the way place such as Grimm
wasn't likely to have many visitors, aside from the regularly-scheduled traders that worked this sector.

Usually Jack, our normal, would have been at the station since he couldn't get down to pressure like the
rest of us. But right now Jack was on his way home with our last load of pyrads for the Federation
markets and orders to fill for the station; food, of course, fuel, repair supplies and, most important to our
sanity, whatever was new in the medical field.

As were most modifieds, we miners were all avowed hypochondriacs. We needed the constant
reassurance of having a large amount of medical machinery right at our fingertips. They tell me it has to do
with the trauma of modification -- when your brain wakes up to find that they've changed things around
since its last check. How would you like to wake up and find your feet right there, three feet from your
nose?

In the last twenty years of operation the biggest injury the station recorded was a sprained ankle. But, as
I said before, statistics don't matter to a modified so we've got everything the medics would sell us.

The major item is a complete rejuvenation rig -- a big glass mother that's capable of rebuilding anything
from a piece of torn skin to a complete torso. Old Sven, "Doc" we call him for he's always studying the
medical equipment and astounding us with his knowledge of their capabilities, says if we have another
sprain it'll be easier to cut off the leg, dump the patient into the unit and wait the twenty-five point six two
days the regrowth would take. Be easier than putting up with the groaning and moaning of the victim.

He's a real joker, that Doc.

We've also got a broad spectrum analyzer for anything from a viral infection to an attack of Martian
screw worms, a comprehensive pharmacopoeia of every drug known to man and the normal complement
of sharp, pointed, and blunt instruments that can be found in any good surgery.

It wasn't until we were in the secondary locks, getting our five atmospheres of ship pressure squeezed out
to one and complaining about the heat when Jock thought of telling Alice what to do for the kid.
I was too sick at the time to hear everything he said, being the slowest one when it comes time to