"Timothy Zahn - Angelmass" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

Blank areas on floorplans and maps were almost always worth checking out. Giving herself a quick
orientation, she headed off toward the nearest to take a look.


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Angelmass

It was surprisingly well hidden. There were no abrupt flat walls or red-lettered warnings anywhere
advertising forbidden territory; nothing but smoothly curving corridors that kept passengers moving
along in blissful ignorance that there was anything else lurking behind the scenes.

Without having seen the floorplan, it might have taken Chandris all of ten minutes to find a way in.
With the floorplan, it took her two. Sometimes the tracks scored themselves.

She'd expected it to be either a section of crew quarters or else part of the Xirrus's functional areas. It
was, in fact, a combination of the two: a large room filled with machinery and pipes and bundles of
wires, but with a pair of short door-lined corridors leading off of it. A handful of men and women
were visible scattered around the room, moving around the machines or sitting at consoles, their
conversation masked by the dull hum that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

For a moment Chandris watched the activity, gauging her chances of getting past them without being
seen. If she could, it ought to give her a way into the middle- and upper-class sections without
having to use the usual connecting passageways. That could be useful, especially as the passageways
had probably been designed to keep nowies like her back here where they belonged.

It was worth a try, anyway. Keeping close to the wall, trying to watch all the workers at once, she
started forward.

"You, thereтАФmiss?"

Chandris's heart skipped a beat; but her face was all innocence as she turned around to face the man
walking toward her. About forty, she estimated his age, with an open, unsuspicious kind of face.
"Yes?" she said.

"Sorry, miss, but passengers aren't allowed in here," he said. "This part of the ship is for crewers
only."

"Oh," Chandris said, letting her face fall a little. Not the kind of man who'd accept a sexual advance,
she decided, at least not from a sixteen-year-old girl. But he might fall for the right mix of kid sister
and eager student. "I'm sorry," she said, face and voice in her newly acquired middle-class college
student role. "I just thought thatтАФwell, you see, I'm going to be studying catalytic nuclear drive in
college andтАФ" she waved at the room with a self-conscious shrugтАФ"well, I just wanted to see what
it was like in here."

Dead center score. His eyes widened, just noticeably, and when he spoke there was a new admiration
in his voice. "You're kidding. Really? Which college are you going to?"

"Ahanne University on Lorelei," she told him, watching his face closely. His forehead seemed on the
edge of wrinklingтАФ"At least to start with," she added before he could say anything. "I'm hoping to
transfer somewhere else after a couple of years."