"Chapter 27" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gordon Dickson - Forever Man)

C H A P T E R

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M SPOKE TO M EMPTY CABIN. ?t HAD NOT EVEN sates TO say farewell, this time, before departing.
Jim checked his instruments.
"There's Earth," he said. "Alarms'll be sounding all over the world right now, seeing we've got a Laagi ship beside us. I'll give them a call."
Mary said nothing. Tine, what he had just said, himself, did not particularly ask for comment, but he would have welcomed a word or two, from which perhaps he might have judged how she was feeling. Evidently, she was still angry with him for some reason-if angry was the word for it. Oh, well . . .
"Base," he said through the ship's equipment in broadcast to that location, "this is ship XN413, your lost baby from a far country. I'll leave our location sounder on, so you can send out an escort to bring us in. We've got a prisoner-he's harmless, so don't come loaded for bear-and he'll need an escort. Also I need to talk to Louis One. Repeat. . . "
He ran through the broadcast several times. He had barely finished before the first half-dozen fighter ships began to appear around him and began to englobe AndFriend and her Laagi prisoner.
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324 I Gordon R. Dickson
"Welcome home, XN413." A voice on the ship-to-ship circuit filled the interior space of AndFriend. "Since we're being formal, this is XY1668, Wing Cee for the pack you see around you. You want to slave to me and we'll carry you in? How about your prisoner, is he slave to you-and is he alive?"
"Very much alive. Handle with cam," answered Jim. "Not, repeat not, slaved to me, but will follow. I slave to younow. Give prisoner in particular lots of room and drive regular. He'll follow. Land him, but do not disturb further. Also do not disturb me after landing. You'll probably get added orders on both of us from Base-but everything clear for now?"
"Clear. Here we go."
The escort moved off, with AndFriend and the Laagi ship traveling as if held in invisible bonds in the center of their formation.
"Mary?" said Jim softly, speaking mind to mind.
She did not answer.
"Mary?" he asked again, still softly.
"What is it?" Her voice was no longer cold, but neither was it warm. It spoke to him with the remoteness of disinterest.
"We're home," said Jim. "This is your territory, again. How do we go about getting back into our own bodies?"
"We'd better wait and see if they're ready to have us reenter, first. Louis will be calling us, shortly, won't he?"
"I'd expect so," said Jim, knowing that short of death, nothing was going to keep General Louis Mollen from being on the phone to them as soon as he heard they were back.
"We'll have to ask him to check with wherever they've been maintaining the bodies, and make sure the technicians there are ready for us to reanimate them. When he gives us word they are, we can go ahead."
"How do we do it? I mean, how do we go about moving back into our bodies?" Jim asked.
"When I was in Raoul's mind in La' Chasse Gallerie"-her voice still sounded remote, disinterested='after I found I couldn't move the ship by myself and also I couldn't communicate with him any better, I finally felt I was wasting my time there. Then I wanted to be back in my own body-and as soon as I wanted to, I was. Evidence is that where you most want to be, your identity is-remember how you got into


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AndFriend in the first place? How you wanted to be with her, and so, you were."
"If you and I could just stay here in the ship, together, I'd want that," said Jim.