"Robert F. Young - The Star Eel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

Unfortunately there is a limit to his lore, and he does not know whether the star eel has a ganglion.
But even if it does have, he has no way of getting to it. The beam his Weikanzer .39 discharges is of
near-laser intensity, but it is incap-able of burning through the eel's thick organic-metallic "skin."
Pro-bably the creature's tail is its most vulnerable part; but even if he can somehow sever it тАФ perhaps
by ramming it with the lifeboat тАФthere is no guarantee that the eel's resultant blindness will cause it to
release its prey.
There simply is no clear-cut course for him to follow. He will have to play it by ear. Leaving the
bridge, he descends to Deck 3 and proceeds to the boat bay. There he climbs into one of the lifeboats,
activates the locks and sails out into the Sea of Space.
When the whale and Starfinder made their convenant, the whale "said," , indicating that (Starfinder)
would be its master and that it would take him anywhere or when he wished to go in (space) and (time).
Starfinder carried out his part of the pact by repairing the whale's unique second ganglion whose
presence the Jonah who had destroyed the first hadn't suspect-ed. Then the whale deorbited from the
shipyards of Altair IV, and whale and man dived into the Sea of Time, that aspect of the continu-um that
is at once part of and at once discrete from the Sea of Space: the interreality that holds conventional
reality together. Now whale and man have returned to the presentтАФto one of the infinitudinous surfaces
of the Sea of Space.
On Starfinder's right blazes the cold white bonfire of a Androme-dae; "above" it, and countless
parsecs beyond, the roseate anti-macassar of M-31 glows softly.
He retrofires before the boat breaks free from the gravitic pull of the whale-ship, then fires a gentle
burst from the starboard jet and brings the craft around. Before him, ship and symbion are sil-houetted
massively against a vast scattering of stars. The hieroglyph is misleading. It corres-ponds to the whale's
self-image тАФto the way it sees itself. In actuality, the whale is not nearly so stream-lined, not nearly so
much like a spaceship. But its hull is burnished like a spaceship's, and its tiers of portholes glow like
golden eyes.
Below them, along the star eel's nearer flank, glow similar tiers of "eyes."
Stunned, Starfinder stares.
The combined mass of the two gargantuan bodies pulls the boat inward. He employs just enough
ventral thrust to put him on a plane with the eel. Gradually its "eyes" resolve into portholes like the
whale's. Its nearer flank, which should be meteor-pocked and creviced, is burnished like the whale's.
There is only one possible answer: the eel is an organic-metallic ship too.
But how can it be if it is still alive?
Granted, the whale is alive and it is a ship тАФ or almost one. But it is like no other whale-ship in
exist-ence. Its fellow ships are all as dead as it itself would be if it hadn't possessed a second ganglion
and if Starfinder hadn't repaired it.
There is a searchbeam in the lifeboat's prow. Starfinder turns it on and plays its dazzling light over the
star eel's flank. In seconds he spots the telltale seam of a boat-bay lock. Just aft of it is a large porthole.
A face is discernible beyond its thick, unbreakable glass. A thin face, with large round eyes тАФ
The face of a frightened girl.

"I still don't think I should have let you in. If I'd known you weren't actually dying like you let on, I
wouldn't have."
The star eel's boat bay is smaller than the whale's. It con-tains two lifeboats similar to his own. The
girl is wearing an abbrev-iated khaki dress and thick-soled canvas sandals. Her light-brown hair is
bobbed and banged; her blue eyes remind him of a wild-flower that grows in the idyllic hills south of
Swerz, the capital city of Altair IV. The barest beginning of breasts lends her dress its only contour. He
judges her to be about twelve.
 It is clear she is all alone. Were she not, someone in authority would have shown up by this time.
Fortunately, Anglo-American is numbered among the languages he is on familiar terms with. "I take it
you're both the captain and the crew," he says.