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

afford unnecessary friction."

"I understand mat, Colonel. But тАж you know it's going to look like you're giving
in to pressure."

"Of course it isтАФand I hate the signal that'll send. If Dunlop hadn't fired from the
hip like he did I'd back him all the way; but as it is I either look like a coward or
someone whose orders can be ignored with impunity. Either way, I give someone
the wrong idea." He shrugged. "If you can come up with a better idea I'll be glad
to listen."

"Yes, sir." Andrews stood up and put away his notebook, and for just a second a
smile twitched at his lips. "I'll see what I can come up with in that department. In
the meantime, I'll get busy on these other things."

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Zahn, Timothy - Spinneret



"Appreciate it, Andrews. Good night."

It was a walk of only a couple hundred meters to his quarters, but Meredith
doubted he had the strength left for even such a short trip. Fortunately, someone
had had the foresight to install a cot in a back corner of his office. Flipping off the
lights, he stripped to his underwear and stretched out under the light blanket. For a
minute or two he watched the pattern of light and shadow on the windowshade,
trying to come up with some other solution for the Dunlop/Ceres problem. But no
answer came, and he quickly gave up the attempt. Maybe in the morning, was his
final thought, things will be clearer.

Chapter 4
With her fifteen years of Army experience, Carmen had left Meredith's office with
the depressing certainty that it would take days for the colonel to take any action
on the problems she had discussed with himтАФand that it would be weeks before
she saw any of the results. It was therefore a pleasant shock when she arrived at
her desk the next morning and found the shifting of extra farm machinery to Ceres
already underway. A fast scan of the priority listing showed none of her
coworkers had yet taken the job of organizing the assembly of spare farm
equipment; keying that job onto her terminal, she set to work.

It was routine data manipulationтАФa simple matter of locating the equipment and
necessary tools from the computer's listings and men shuffling work schedules for
the right number of qualified mechanicsтАФand as she tapped keys, her mind
drifted back to the previous day and her conversations with Perez and Meredith.

She hadn't worked under Meredith for long, and aside from a brief interview when
she'd been accepted for the colony, her personal knowledge of him was limited to
the Ceres trip. Still, military bases had their fair share of gossip, and the stories
she'd heard about the colonel had invariably painted him as honest and fair, which