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

her mouth as though to prevent words already spoken from getting out. He has already ascer-tained that
the larder is a cul-de-sac. Swiftly he steps over to the door to the dining hall, lets himself out and closes
and locks it behind him. His parting glimpse of Ciely shows her still sitting at the table with her hand over
her mouth. He finds it odd that she should be so slow to react. She did not strike him as a dim-witted girl.
Quite the contrary, he was struck by her intelligence.

In Starfinder's day, the men and women who choose ship-build-ing as a trade are not renowned for
their creativity. In the back of each of their minds there apparently is a universal blueprint showing how a
spaceship, whether it is to be converted from a whale or an eel, or built from scratch, should be laid out.
Thus, for Starfinder to find the control room of the eel is a relatively simple matter.
The console is an imposing affair, its banks of buttons, gauges, dials and meters extending all the way
to the ceiling. Moreover, it is built into the forward bulkhead. But Starfinder is not dismayed, either by its
seeming complexity or by its seeming inaccessibility from the rear. In all probability only a small fraction
of the dazzling array is related to the extensors, and no console has ever been built without its builders
providing a means for a repairman to get at it from behind.
Presently his practiced eye singles out a panel whose meters have blank faces and whose dials look
like dummies. Its base is flush with the deck and there is a telltale scratch on its upper right-hand corner.
In seconds he finds the camouflaged catch, and a moment later pulls the panel out and sets it to one side.
Then he crawls through the square aperture and stands up. He is in a cubby hole hacked out of the
fibrous interior-tissue of the eel and illuminated only by the eel's inner phosphorescence.
The phosphorescence is paler than that which emanates from the transsteel-like internal tissue of the
whale, but it is bright enough for him to discern the extensors. There are five of them, and they emerge
from an opening at the base of the bulkhead and lie sinuously on the deck. Insofar as he can see, they are
perfectly ordinary split-end impulse-cables. One is blue, one yellow, one green, one red, and one black.
The switch boxes they were pulled from are of corresponding colors.
Plugging Pasha back in should be a cinch.
Impulse-cables employ the molecular relay principle and are nonconductive, and so there is no real
reason to suppose the extensors are hot. Bending down, he touches the red one tentatively. Not so much
as a tingle. Boldly he picks it up. It is about one inch in diameter, surprisingly flexible, surprisingly warm
and surprisingly smooth. So smooth, in fact, that it slips out of his fingers and drops back to the deck.
He picks it up again. It seems to writhe in his hand. He is about to drop it of his own accord when
suddenly it coils itself tightly around his right wrist.
He essays the impossible task of drawing his Weikanzer .39 with his left hand. Before he even
manages to touch the holster, another exten-sor тАФ the green one тАФ coils itself around his left wrist.
The blue one coils itself around his right ankle.
The yellow one around his left.
He knows now why Ciely put her hand over her mouth. It wasn't to hold back words that had
already got out; it was to stifle her laughter.
When she pulled the extensors out, the eel, to ensure that it would never be enslaved again, somehow
transformed them into prosthetic tentacles with which to defend itself. Starfinder knows this now. He
should have guessed it before.
And Ciely knew it all along. Perhaps she found out by accident, or perhaps she deduced it. Either
way, she knew тАФ knows тАФ and knowing, permitted Starfinder to set forth for Samarra without a word
of warning.
No doubt she also knew тАФknows тАФ any member of ways to get out of the galley without using the
dining-room door. If she doesn't, she can probably get Pasha to open it for her.
She may even have informed him of Starfinder's intent. "Get him!" she probably said. "He's a typical
no-good member of the haute bourgeoisie!"
One should never underesti-mate either the intelligence or the capacity for cruelty of innocent
children.