"Jean and Jeff Sutton - Alien From The Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sutton Jean and Jeff)

alone had survived. But of course the crew couldn't have acted to effect an
escape -- not while a single passenger remained aboard. That law was older
than space travel itself. Only the late hours he had chosen to review tapes of
the ancient Okra civilization had saved him.
Briefly, he wondered at the nature of the disaster. There had been scant
warning, only moments. He surmised it had to do with the energy converters,
perhaps the failure of a switch to prevent the accumulation of power. Not that
such disasters were unknown, but they were exceedingly rare. In his own life
he had known of only a few.
Although not a crewman, Barlo was well acquainted with the small scout
pods used both for the exploration of planetary surfaces and as lifeboats,
should the latter need arise. Checking the supplies, he was momentarily
disconcerted to discover that the oxygen units were nearly depleted. He had
scant time to find a suitable planet.
He didn't bother to transmit a distress signal; such an attempt would be
futile. The occasional ship that might pass through this lonely realm out near
the edge of the galaxy would be in Q space, quite beyond the pod's limited
communication facilities. But when the Zemm liner failed to reach its
destination, the Unity's far-flung search and rescue units would comb the
moons and planets of every sun in the vicinity of the liner's flight path.
Rescue was certain -- if he lived. He had but to find an appropriate planet.
Although Barlo had never traveled this particular sector of the galaxy,
he could roughly calculate his position from the ship's flight corridor and
the time of the disaster. A lonely area out toward the rim, it was sparse of
stars with habitable planets. Consequently, when he activated the visual
telescanner, he was startled to see a brilliant yellow sun leap into view.
Appearing to hang in splendid isolation, it dwarfed the sprinkle of stars
around it. Instinctively he knew that the sun was within range of the small
scout pod. He felt a stir of hope.
A grav detector locked on the yellow sun caused a transparent sphere on
the instrument console to glow to life. The yellow sun appeared as a small dot
at its center. Amplifying the power source by a factor of five thousand
brought nine planets into view, each represented in the sphere as a small dot
located according to its orbital position. His hopes rose. Of the seven outer
dots, all but the farthest from the sun were accompanied by one or more minute
white grains which represented moons.
Although Barlo's life rested on his findings, he studied the miniature
replica of the planetary system with the detachment that came with long
scientific training. The positions of the dots in the sphere indicated he was
viewing the system from an angle of nearly 90 degrees from the plane of the
ecliptic; that is, he was moving toward the sun's pole.
He returned his attention to the yellow sun. A medium-sized star of
middle life, the spectrum of its photosphere revealed the presence of hydrogen
and helium together with traces of calcium. That was favorable, for such suns
quite often provided planetary environments rich in life. He would have
preferred a red sun, of course, simply because its radiance was more pleasant
to the eye. When viewed from afar his own sun, Zaree, gleamed like an ember
amid the harsh light of its neighboring stars. How much lovelier it was! But
now he had no alternative; his scout pod had not the range to reach another
star.