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

sleep if she wanted to be at least halfway competent at her job. Especially after
undergoing this new space-age equivalent of jet lag.

She closed her eyes, but her mind seemed to still be in high gear. Inventory lists
and storage assignments hovered in front of her eyes, threatening her with an
avalanche of paper. She'd been doing this sort of work for fifteen years now, but
nothing in her experience had prepared her for the sheer complexity of this job.
Ten thousand colonists and military people required a tot of supplies, and aside
from water the local environment provided practically zilch. And it was a long,
long way to Earth for anything they ran out of.

She fought it for ten minutes before finally tossing back the sheet and padding
barefoot to the kitchen. The individual food supplies hadn't yet been distributed to
the various houses, but the plumbing and microwave worked and she always
carried a few packets of instant hot chocolate in her personal luggage. A few
minutes later she was sitting by the kitchen window with the steaming mug,
listening to the faint voices and machinery sounds from the direction of the docks.
/ wonder when I'll start missing Fort Dix, she wondered. Not that the base or even
the rest of Jersey had held that great an attraction for her; but after a lifetime of
periodic uprootings, she knew full well that the pangs of homesickness would
eventually come. In her Army brat days the agony had sometimes seemed to be
more than she could handle, enhanced as it was by the loss of school and friends;
now, at the ripe old age of thirty-six, she knew the reaction would be no more than
a dull haze over her life for a few days. Still, it was never much fun. One of these
days, she told herself, sipping cautiously, I'm going to have to give up this
nonsense and settle down somewhere for good. Maybe when we've got Astra on its
feet тАж or when we throw in the towel and all go home. Whichever comes first.

Somehow, neither option seemed all that thrilling at the moment. Never get
philosophical at two in the morning, she thought, quoting Number Twelve of her
personal list of rules, and dismissed the subject. Draining her cup, she rinsed it out
and put it into the sink, hoping in passing that her new roommate wouldn't turn
out to be a cleanliness fanatic. Back in bed, she found her brain had cut back to

file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/De.../Zahn,%20Timothy%20-%20Spinneret%20[v1.1].html (19 of 309) [2/1/2004 3:54:12 AM]
Zahn, Timothy - Spinneret


idleтАФfar enough down for her usual sleep routine to be effective. Snuggling up to
her pillow, she closed her eyes. Sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof,
she quoted to herself, and turned loose the future to handle its own affairs. Two
minutes later she was fast asleep.

Chapter 2
" тАж and here are the inventory lists from Crosse," Major Thomas Brown said,
laying one last thickness of printout on Colonel Meredith's desk. "Everything's out
of the Aurora now, and the Pathfinder's last load is on its way down. Most of the
stuff waiting to be sorted is bulk food, clothing, and fertilizer."

Meredith nodded, glancing over the first page of the printout. His eyeballs ached