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

forward com-panionway to the bridge where M-31 still glows in the screen like a roseate antimacassar
on the black headrest of the star-encrusted throne of God.
"Yes," Ciely murmurs, "it is a beautiful ship indeed."
"Whale."
"Yes. Whale. Do you know," she says, "I sometimes make that same mistake with Pasha. I start
thinking of him as a ship. And it makes me ashamed, because he's as much of a living being as I am."
"Sometimes I think of the whale that way too," Starfinder says.
"And do you feel ashamed?"
"Yes."
"It comes as quite a surprise to me that a member of the haute bourgeoisie should have such
refin-ed sensibilities."
"I'm not a member any more."
"Perhaps that explains it." She looks at him beseechingly. "If I call Pasha off, will you guarantee that
the whale won't hurt him?"
"I'm positive he won't, Ceily."
She faces the bridge screen, gazes out across the immensities at the pale pink antimacassar of M-31.
She seems so small, standing there; so thin, so fragile. So terribly alone. She whispers the command that
she projects into the star eel's nucleus, and the whispered words dissolve the silence that shrouds the
bridge тАФ
тАЬRelease him, Pasha. And wait for me.тАЭ
The silence resolidifies. It is like the black silence that shrouds the whale and its piggy-back rider. Girl
and man are immobile. The bridge screen is a black canvas upon which a cosmic artist has painted an
island universe.
Presently a tremor passes through the whale. It is similar to the one that shook Starfinder out of
sleep, but not as violent. After it passes, a great dark shape hurtles into view on the bridge screen,
occulting M-31. The star eel has leaped free from its prey and has hurried on ahead to await its mistress.
A crepitant roar fills the belly of the whale. Starfinder has heard the sound before. It is the roar of
2-omicron-vii surging into the whale's drive tissue: the prelude to a tremendous burst of speed. "No,
whale тАФ NO!" he screams.
The whale does not "hear." Primitive rage seethes in its gang-lion, flows through its bulkheads and its
decks. It is no longer a ship nor even a whale; it is a space beast born of the far-flung fury of the
primordial explosion; the haecceity of vindictiveness. Transmuting the last of its energy into savage thrust,
it hurls itself toward its hereditary enemy.
The eel has turned broadside. Desperately it tries to get out of the path of the great black beast it
presumed to prey upon. But the whale's momentum triples in the space of seconds. Pasha's nearer flank
looms large in the bridge screen; larger still. Abruptly there is a hideous shriek of metallic tissue being
ripped asunder; a vast virti-ginous shuddering. Starfinder en-circles a stanchion with one arm, Ceily with
the other, as before their eyes Pasha breaks in two. Two-omicron-vii radiation escapes into space,
turning the screen blue; there is a white, a blinding light. Ceily screams. The white light flashes in the
bridge portholes as the disintegrating halves of Pasha flicker past. The aft-scope briefly frames a flaming
mass.
The whale discerns a distant meteor swarm. It homes in on it and begins to feed.

Ciely's eyes have not moved from the bridge screen. It is dap-pled with distant stars now тАФspatters
from the cosmic artist's brush. "Pasha," she whispers. "My Pasha."
At last she turns away. She frees herself from Starfinder's encircling arm and looks
uncomprehendingly up at his face. "You said тАФ You said тАФ"
"I never dreamed he's react like that, Ciely. He тАФ he had begun to seem human to me. I forgot that
humanity, at best, is a surface characteristic."
She begins to cry. Her shoulders do not shake, her body does not convulse; that is the most terrible