"Robert F. Young - L'Arc de Jeanne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

hand down on the man's forearm, shattering the bone, and the numbgun went flying. Catching it with one
hand, D'Arcy seized Jeanne Marie's wrist with the other. "Come on," he said, "we'll have to run for it!"
To his amazement, she held back. "Why are you still here?" she gasped. "Why weren't you returned
to your own ship?"
He wondered vaguely, way in the back of his mind, how she had found out that he didn't belong on
this one. But he did not pursue the mystery. "Never mind," he said. "Come on!"
"No, noтАФyou don't understand!"
Angrily, he picked her up and slung her over his shoulder. She was surprisingly heavy for so slight a
girl, but it wasn't her weight that hampered himтАФit was her frenzied attempts to free herself. "For
heaven's sake, Jeanne Marie," he cried, "do you want them to burn you?"
 "Yes, yes!" Abruptly she ceased struggling and went limp. "But you don't understand and I can't
make you in so short a time. Oh, it's hopeless!"
He was running now. Behind him and to his left and to his right, people were shouting and screaming.
Secret police popped onto the path to bar his way, but he numbgunned them down before they had a
chance to bring their own weapons into play. The trees thinned out, and he came to the esplanade that
bordered the administrative sector. Turning right, he pounded toward the red-lit entrance of the boat-bay
corridor. After he passed through it, he and his burden were borne swiftly to their destination. Arriving in
the bay, he closed the heavy emergency doors and sealed them. Until such time as they could be burned
through, he and Jeanne Marie were safe.
The bay contained eighteen escape boats altogether. They stood side by side on an automatic
launcher and the first one was already in position before the self-operating locks. He carried Jeanne
Marie over to it and lowered her into the cockpit; then he climbed in after her and closed the nacelle. He
leaned forward to inspect the controls. He glimpsed the descending wrench out of the corner of his eye.
Where she had obtained it, he did not know. Probably she had found it on the seat. He had a hunch even
before he tried to dodge that he was too late, and he was right. The stars that presently swam before his
eyes burned almost as brightly as the stars that lay upon the face of night, and the darkness that followed
them was almost as black as space.
D'Arcy had been knocked out before; consequently, when he regained consciousness a subjective
second later, he suspected that objectively he had been out for a far longer period of time.
A brief survey of his surroundings more than confirmed it.
The escape boat hung like a tiny ornament on the vast Christmas tree of space. Behind itтАФperhaps a
hundred kilometers distantтАФhung the larger ornament of the Ambassadress, and backgrounding the
flagship was the largestтАФand by far the loveliestтАФornament of all: Ciel Bleu.
It wasn't difficult to figure out what had happened. After striking him with the wrench, Jeanne Marie
had programmed a course on the a.p., climbed out of the escape boat, and launched the craft into
space.
Buy why? And how had a simple peasant girl managed to carry out such a sophisticated operation?
His head ached fiercely and his thoughts kept tripping over one another's feet; nevertheless, he found
an answer to the first question. Jeanne Marie had wanted to get him out of the way so that she could
allow herself to be recaptured ... and burned.
He now had another "why" to contend withтАФa rather large and horrible one.
Like all escape boats, the one in which he had been jettisoned was equipped with a radio-television
unit. The receiver was already tuned to the Ambassadress's channel; it remained but for him to activate
the screen. With trembling fingers he did so.
He recoiled. The burning was already in progress.
Frenziedly he halted the headlong flight of the escape boat and turned the craft around, all the while
aware that he was acting out of blind instinct and that Jeanne Marie was beyond earthly aid.
Abruptly the screen went blank.
He fumbled with the tuning mechanism, not because he wanted to bring the hideous scene back to
life, but because he felt somehow that he had to. But the screen refused to co-operate and he picked up