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

They had lived with that awesome concept from their first moments of
awareness. Aboard the Earthling, they were a hand-picked lot, 3,006 survivors
of the toughest weeding-out process the Project directors could devise for
their Doppelganger charges. The final six had been the choicest of the choice
-- the umbilicus crew to monitor the ship until it left the solar system, then
tie off the few manual controls and turn the 200-year crossing to Tau Ceti
over to that one lonely consciousness, an Organic Mental Core.

And while the 3,006 lay dormant behind the hyb tanks' water shields in the
heart of the ship, their lives were to remain subject to the servos and
sensors surgically linked to the OMC.

But now we're 3,003, Timberlake thought with that sense of grief, of shame and
defeat. And our last OMC is dead.

Timberlake felt alone and vulnerable now, faced by their emergency controls.
He had been reasonably confident while the brains existed and with one of them
responsible for ultimate ship security. The existence of emergency controls
had only added to his confidence . . . then.

Now, staring at the banks of switches, the gauges and telltales and manuals,
the auxiliary computer board with its paired vocoder and tape-code inputs and
readouts -- now, Timberlake realized how inadequate were his poor human
reactions in the face of the millisecond demands for even ordinary emergencies
out here.

The ship's moving too fast, he thought.

Their speed was slow, he knew, compared to what they should have been doing at
this point . . . but still it was too fast. He activated a small sensor
screen on his left, permitted himself a brief look at the exterior cosmos,
staring out at the hard spots of brilliance that were stars against the energy
void of space.

As usual, the sight reduced him to the feeling that he was a tiny spark at the
mercy of unthinking chance. He blanked the screen.

Movement at his elbow drew Timberlake's attention. He turned to see Bickel
come up to lean against a guidepole beside the control console. There was
such a look of relief on his face that Timberlake had a sudden insight,
realizing that Bickel had sent his guilt winging back to Moonbase with that
message. Timberlake wondered then what it had felt like to kill -- even if
the killing had involved a creature whose humanity had become hidden behind an
aura of mechanistics long years back when it was removed from a dying body.

Bickel studied the drive board. They had disabled the drive-increment system
when the second OMC had started going sour. But the Earthling still would be
out of the solar system in ten months.

Ten months, Bickel thought. Too fast and too slow.