"Charles Stross - Escape" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

"Okay." I hope this is right, I think. Two tunnels lead straight down. I note that her sensors are
registering vacuum and cold; the surfaces are freezing. Vented gas chills the walls. She sees whorls and
crescents of frost, looks closer. "Hey, check this out. What's it made of?"

"I've got the kit." Parveen stabs a mess spec terminal at the wall and vapourizes a tiny chunk. "Hey," she
says; "this is crazy. Fragments mass up to ten daltons ... mostly diamondoid carbon ..." A mass profile
pushes into my viewfield. "Shit! Solid nanoassemblers!"

"So?" Lorma asks. "It's alive. Or was. Let's move in before it notices us." She turns and aims herself at
the nearest downward-leading passage. Sonar is useless; she flashes a searchlight along it. Darkness. Her
throttle blips open effortlessly, punching her into the tunnel at breakneck speed.

I track Parveen following her, lagging at a distance. "Brake!" Lorma shouts as a bend lights up ahead of
her like an oncoming train. There's something down there. I almost sit up in my restraint web, as if by
leaning forward I can see more closely what her sensors are telling her. Venous patterns weave around
the walls of the passage as strands of mist begin to rise around Lorma. Cautiously she stops her descent
and braces herself between the sides of the tunnel. Gas analysis: almost entirely carbon dioxide. And it's
hot. She switches her sensors to infrared and suddenly I can see the patterns on the walls more clearly;
pulsing veins.

"Do you see what I see?" Parveen asked. "This whole ship seems to be alive!"

"No surprise," I say. "Life gets maximal data packing into the smallest structures ... ref DNA for you. This
ship was probably grown from a seed the size of a cell."

"Thanks, Oshi. Pressure's going up ... past point one bar. Hey, this could get sticky. How's comm?"

"I stuck a transponder up top," Parveen says. "There shouldn't be any grey-out."

"Okay. If you see any recognizable sockets ..."

"Got the patch kit."
I break my attention back to the bridge for a moment. Mik has pulled out of his drone. He and Boris are
talking quietly behind me. What ... oh yes. You might as well follow it all on full-immersion, Boris
argues; I'll go into fusion with Trotsky to oversee the dreamtime dump. Mik finally agrees: Who
should I piggyback? Boris names someone. Check. Then they fall silent, riding the overspill from the
drone sensoria.

I blink. " Info status."

"You called?"

" Where's the coder interface?"

"Surface mounted, down and in place. Receiver is opening now."

I blip to one of the other drones, jump channels until I see a huge phased-array antenna unfurl against the
stars above a darkling plain. It's Raisa. "How's it going?" I ask.

"Nominal." She keeps an efficient look-out; she's anchored the receiver carefully, and the hefty cable