"Allen, Roger MacBride - Chronicles of Solace 3 - Shores of Tomorrow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Allen Roger Macbride)

“To put it mildly. But I sure as hell don’t see any way out of it.”

“Nor do I,” Koffield said. Even if there had been some way to escape, it seemed possible that the fate of worlds—perhaps of every inhabited world—might hinge on what happened here, now, on Glister. Koffield was willing to hand off a few presentations, but walking away fromthat duty,that responsibility, would be as grave a crime of omission as any that DeSilvo had committed. They had to stay, and do what they could.



Captain Marquez led the way through the corridors and walkways to the main airlock center. At Marquez’s request, DeSilvo had rigged a Personnel Access Tunnel between the airlock center and theCruzeiro do Sul, eliminating the need to use the personnel carrier that had first brought them from theCruzeiro into DeSilvo City. There was pressure in the PAT, but, as a safety precaution, all the airlock doors were sealed at both ends when the airlock center and ship were untended.

Marquez started the lock cycling and stepped to a large viewport set in one side of the airlock center. It offered an excellent view of the lighterCruzeiro do Sul, still sitting where she had landed, dead center in the middle of the domed-over landing field.

TheCruzeiro do Sul was not much to look at. She was a fat grey cylinder, fifteen meters high and twenty across, standing on four stumpy landing legs. She was the largest of theDom Pedro IV ’s three original auxiliary craft, and the only one of the three to survive the visit to Mars. Now she stood at the center of DeSilvo’s landing field, with any number of jacks and plugs and umbilicals plugged into her—along with the PAT. She was tied down tight, with a lid, in the form of the dome over the landing field, slammed down on top of her.

The PAT ran for two hundred meters between the city lock and theCruzeiro, and was as worn-out and shabby as most everything else in DeSilvo City; cobbled together from salvage and whatever parts were at hand. It was designed to hang from suspension supports that looked like giant inverted U’s. The PAT hung from the centers of the U’s, the two legs holding the tunnel up. There should have been supports every twenty meters or so. Instead, there were three for the whole length of the thing.

The dome had closed over the lighter almost before she had come to rest. The dome, DeSilvo assured them, was already well camouflaged, but could and would be opened when the time came to launch theCruzeiro —whenever that time might be. The earthmovers would then bury the dome to hide it even more effectively. Marquez was not in the least assured by DeSilvo’s assurances that theCruzeiro do Sul would fly again.

TheCruzeiro was in takeoff position, but he knew full well that, if need be, the landing field’s automated lifters and transporters could move theCruzeiro to one side of the dome in order to launch another craft—then leave her there for good. The prospect of having his ship literally shoved to one side was not one Marquez enjoyed contemplating.

“I don’t like it,” he said.

Koffield put his hand on Marquez’s shoulder and nodded. He had no need to ask what Marquez meant. “None of us do,” he said. “And the rest of us know it’s worse for you in a lot of ways. He’s seized your ship—your ships.”

Marquez nodded without speaking. TheDom Pedro IV was even less under his control than the poor oldCruzeiro .

“For what it’s worth,” Koffield said, “I think at least most of the others have some idea how much that means. We’ve all lost our homes. But you’ve lost something more than that.”

A bit of my manhood,do you mean? Marquez said to himself.A captain who allows his ship to be taken from him . . . Out loud, his words were scarcely less harsh. “But who knows?” Marquez asked bitterly. “Maybe if I’m a good little boy—if we’re all good little boys and girls—he’ll give me back my spacecraft.”

And there’s the question of what all this has cost you, my friend,Marquez thought, looking at his companion. But, as always, Anton Koffield showed very little sign of the stress and strain of his situation—or much of anything else, if it came to that.

Koffield was of average size, but his slender, well-muscled build made him look smaller than he was. His long, lean face and slightly olive complexion set off his expressive, deep-set brown eyes. Those eyes could tell you a lot—but they rarely did. Koffield kept himself under tight control. His close-cropped brown hair had thinned a bit more over the years, and even acquired a touch of grey—but for all of that he looked, if anything, younger than his years, his obvious vigor and quick, careful intelligence plain to see.

A signaler beeped over the airlock door, indicating that there was a pressure match. Marquez opened the lock door, and both men stepped inside. Marquez closed and sealed the city-side lock door, checked for a pressure match with the PAT, and then opened the PAT-side door.

If the PAT’s exterior was unimpressive, one look at the inside of the Personnel Access Tunnel was doubly so. It was a worn, even shabby old thing, little more than a semiflexible plastic pipe. It was square in cross section, with the corners deeply rounded-off as a concession to the physics of pressure control. The sides of the PAT were scuffed and dirty, and the floor’s rubbery hexagonal walkway grid was half–worn away, making the footing very tricky in places—especially in the stretches far away from the supports. The PAT tended to move around as one walked through it. Toward the center of the longest span, it was a little like walking on a trampoline.

“I wonder where the hell he scavenged this from,” Marquez muttered as he grabbed again for the flimsy handrail and struggled to stay on his feet.

“I’m not sure I want to know,” Koffield said.

Somehow, the two of them managed to stay on their feet all the way to the outer hatch of theCruzeiro . Marquez examined the hatch’s seals and settings carefully before he set to work opening the security locks. “DeSilvo or his robotscould have gotten in here,” he said. “He’s gotten past a lot tougher security than the locks on this door. I can’t swear to it, but Ithink that no one and nothing has come through here since the last time I was in theCruzeiro .”

He opened the security locks and bled the pressure off the lock interior. The two men entered and moved quickly through the lock chamber to the ship’s interior.

Marquez looked around the cabin, checked the displays by the inside of the inner lock door, then stepped back into the lock compartment, and locked down the outer door from the inside, setting the security locks as well as the pressure seals. Then he stepped out of the lock, and back onto the main deck of theCruzeiro . He sealed the lock’s inner door, then repressurized the airlock chamber itself, up to 150 percent of standard. He then set the inner controls so that the lock could not be operated at all from the outside control panel.

With that much overpressure forcing the doors shut against their seals, it would be all but impossible to open the outer hatch with anything short of explosives, or else by drilling a hole through the outer lock door to bleed the pressure. Setting the doors that way would greatly slow their escape from the lighter in an emergency, and it would make it a virtual certainty that no rescuers could get in quickly enough to be of any help.

Koffield watched what Marquez was doing, and did not say a word.