"Herbert, Frank - DV 1 - Destination Void v5.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

"No, Sir. Nothing."

"I want you to go through the message capsule again," he said. "We're missing something."

"Yes, Sir." It was a sigh of resignation.

Someone else spoke from the darkness: "Get ready for the capsule launching . . ."

Yes, they'd all seen this enough to anticipate the sequence.

The capsule was a silver needle that looped from the Earthling's stern. It held to the ship's blind spot (who knew what weapons such a ship might produce?) until it was lost among the stars.

From beneath their view a flame darted -- the laser relay with its destruct message. A purple glow touched the ship's bulbous nose. It held for no more than three heartbeats before the ship exploded in a blinding orange blossom.

"That Flattery model is sure as hell reliable," someone said.

Nervous laughter went around the room, but he ignored it, concentrating on the viewer. Why the hell did they always think it was the Flattery model? It could be anyone on the crew.

Their view closed on the swollen blossom with the collapsing speed of time-lapse which made the explosion's orange light wink out too rapidly. Presently, the movement slowed and their view moved into the spreading wreckage, probing with crystalline flares of light until it found what it sought -- the recording box. That and the message capsule were the most important elements remaining from this failure.

Claw retractors could be seen grabbing the recording box and pulling it back beneath their view. The crystalline light continued to probe. Anything they saw here could be valuable. But the light picked out nothing but twisted metal, torn shreds of plastic and, here and there, limbs and other parts of the crew. There was one particularly brutal glimpse of a head with part of a shoulder and an arm that ended just below the elbow. Bloody frost globules had formed around the head but they still recognized it.

"Tim!" someone said.

A woman's voice far to the rear of the room could be heard repeating: "Shit . . . shit . . . shit . . ." until someone silenced her.

The view blanked out and he leaned back, feeling the ache between his shoulders. He knew he would have to identify that woman and have her transferred. No mistaking the near hysteria in her voice. Some harsh catharsis was indicated. He shut down the holopack's controls, flicked the switch for the room lights, then stood and turned in the blinking brilliance.

"They're clones," he said, keeping his voice cold. "They are not human; they are clones, as is indicated by their uniform middle name of 'Lon.' They are property! Anybody who forgets that is going off Moonbase in the next shuttle. That sign on my door says 'Morgan Hempstead, Director.' There will be no more emotional outbursts in this room as long as I am Director."










CHAPTER 1


We call it Project Consciousness and our basic tools are the carefully selected clones, our Doppelgangers. The motivator is frustration; thus we design into our system false goals and things which will go wrong. That's why we chose Tau Ceti as the target: there is no livable planet at Tau Ceti.

-Morgan Hempstead, Lectures at Moonbase


"IT'S DEAD," Bickel said.