"Zach Hughes - Mother Lode" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Zach)

He grinned. She was not unaware that Denton Gale was a
well-constructed, smooth-muscled young man of considerable masculine
appeal. He had sun-smiles at the corners of his eyes to match her space
squint lines. The way he looked at her told her that he was not
unimpressed by an ash blonde woman in spacer's blue.

"Damn," she said.

"What?"

She shook her head. She'd been joining Denton in the mating dance of
the juveniles, and she wasn't in the mood for games of that sort. "I've
forgotten how to check hidden files on a Century," she said.

"Unless you have the entry code there's no way to do it short of cooking
the X&A black box." The black box, required equipment on any
space-going computer, held everything that went into the Century whether
from the ship's automatic recordings of position and direction or by
manual feed from an operator, kept it secure from meddling, under seal,
available for official examination should it ever become necessary.
Accidents in space were rare, but when the inevitable happened the black
box, destructible only by atomics or by being tossed into a sun, gave the
reasons. The black box was sacred. To tamper with it was a felony serious
enough to lose a man his license and his liberty. X&A was jealous of its
police powers in space.

"Did you try Mother's birth date?"

He smiled and nodded. "And your dad's birth date and his Service
serial number."

"If you have something to do, Dent, I think I'll stay here and tinker with
this old crock for a while."

"There is some paperwork. I'll be in the office."

"Thanks for what you've done."

"No problem," he said.

She punched in an order for coffee. It was a thick, heady brew, her
father's favorite, made from Delos beans and rich, synthetic cream. Mop
indicated that he'd been on board the ship before by going to a service
area that had obviously been installed for a person of just his height to
paw a little red button that delivered a Mop-sized milk bone.

"Well, aren't you the spoiled one," she teased, as he crawled under the
command chair and began to consume the tidbit with unhurried
satisfaction.