"Frank Herbert - Destination Void 1 Destination Void" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

terminal cases since that makes the morality of the act less questionable.

And now we've killed it.

"I'll tell you what I'm going to do," Bickel said. He looked at the
Accept-And-Translate board auxiliary to the transmitter on his personal
control console. "I'm going to report back to Moonbase what's happened." He
turned from the raped panel, dropped the severed feeder tube to the deck
without looking at it. The tube drifted downward slowly in the ship's quarter
gravity.

"We've no code for this . . . this kind of emergency." Timberlake confronted
Bickel, stared angrily at the man's square face, disliking every feature of it
from the close-cropped blond hair to the wide mouth and pugnacious jaw.

"I know," Bickel said, and he stepped around Timberlake. "I'm sending it
clear speech."

"You can't do that!" Timberlake protested, turning to glare at Bickel's back.

"Every second's delay adds to the time lag," Bickel said. "As it is, it has
to go more than a fourth of the way across the solar system." He dropped into
his couch, set the cocoon to half enclose him, swung the transmitter into
position.

"You'll be blatting it to everyone on Earth, including you-know-who!"
Timberlake said.

Because he half agreed with Timberlake and wanted to gain time, Flattery moved
to a position looking down on Bickel in the couch: "What specifically are you
going to tell them?"

"I'm not about to mince words," Bickel retorted. He threw the transmitter
warmup switches, began checking the sequence tape. "I'm going to tell 'em we
had to unhook the last brain from the ship's controls . . . and kill it in the
process."

"They'll tell us to abort," Timberlake said.

The merest hesitation of his hands on the tape-punch keyboard told that Bickel
had heard.

"And what'll you say happened to the brains?" Flattery asked.

"They went nuts," Bickel said. "I'm just going to report our casualties."

"That's not precisely what happened," Flattery said.

"We'd better talk this over," Timberlake said, and he felt the beginnings of
desperation.