"Jack Yeovil - Comeback Tour" - читать интересную книгу автора (Yeovil Jack)

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Dark Future III



Comeback Tour



Jack Yeovil

PROLOGUE

Cape Canaveral, 1978.

The Dream was dying.
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Commander Lawrence Jerome Fonvielle gritted his teeth and held back tears as the console lights went
out, bank by bank. The technicians were calmly proceeding with the shutdown, going from desk to desk,
flicking switches and pulling wires. They were as thorough and efficient as he would have demanded them
to be, had he still been responsible for issuing their orders. His title was almost purely honorary, now.
You couldn't be a Commander when the Suits took your command out from under you.

"We have a splash-down, sir," said Wardle, still monitoring the Big Screen. "Dead centre of the target
area."

The Old Magic. American Know-How. It was still there.

"The USS Eisenhower is deploying the Sikorskis to pick up Santini's men."

Fonvielle nodded. He could not count the number of splashdowns he had anxiously lived through. This,
he knew, would be the last.

Bobbing out there in the South Pacific in their Vulcan capsule were the last generation. Eleven men and
three women in a tin can, waiting to be choppered out before the spacecraft sank.

"CampGlennis still operational, sir. Good steady signals."

Fonvielle could not reply. He looked at the monitors. The base in theSeaofTranquillity , so recently
evacuated, would continue its measuring, evaluating and transmitting long after there was anyone on Earth
interested in the data. These days, if there wasn't any money in it, no one gave a damn. Fonvielle was an
old-time fighter jock himself, and the new math gave him a headache, but he could appreciate the beauty