"Chapter 04" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gordon Dickson - Forever Man)

screen went dark and blank.
Grief tore at him. And rage.
"Transmit now!" he howled at the other ships. "Check Ten!
checkTen-"
He slapped a magnetic on the battered cone shape that fled
by a miracle still beside him and punched for the jump-
Disorientation. Nausea. And-
The stars of the Frontier were ahead of them. Jim stared
into his screens. They floated in empty space, three gray-
white dart shapes and the ravaged shape of La Cnasse Gal-
lerie. Lela rode level with Jim's ship, but Swallow was slowly
turning sideways like a dying fish drifting in the ocean cur-
rents. Jim stared into the small screen showing the Swallow's
interior. The two suited figures sat in a blackened cabin, un-
moving.
"Swallow!" said Jim hoarsely. "Are you all right? Ac-
knowledge. Acknowledge!"
But there was no answer from the two figures, and the
Swallow continued to drift, turning, as if she was sliding off
some invisible slope into the endless depths of the universe.
Jim shook with a cold, inner sickness like a chill. They're just
unconscious, he thought. They have to be just unconscious.
Otherwise they wouldn't have been able to make the jump to
here.
"-Bngadier!" the voice of Penard WM singing with
strange softness-

...repondit Pandore
Brigadier! Vous avez raison.
Brigadier! repondit Pandore
Brigadier! Vous avez raison!-

Jim turned slowly to look into the screen showing La
Chasse Gallerie. He stared at what he saw. If the old ship had
been badly slashed before, she was a ruin now. Nothing could
be alive in such a wreck. Nothing. But the voice of Penard
sang on.
"No..." muttered Jim out loud, unbelievingly. "Not even
a semianimate control center could come through that. It
couldn't-" He stirred himself and shifted once more, push-
ing for speed by settling for any location in the general direc-
tion of the Frontier's other side....
"Identify yourself!" crackled a voice suddenly on Jim's
ears. "Identify yourself! This is Picket Six, B Sector, Frontier
area."
"Wander Section-" muttered Jim, still staring at the tat-
tered form of La Chasse Gallerie. He remembered the original
legend about the return of the dead voyageurs in their ghost
canoes, and a shiver went down his back. "Wander Section,
returning from deep probe and rescue mission into Laagi terri-