"Zach Hughes - Gold Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Zach)

"It is impossible for the signal to be on the tape," he said slowly,
"unless, one, a ship sent it, or two, something happened to a ship at the
beginning of a blink."

"Or three," she said, "unless the equipment just hiccuped."

Pete had the training to repair non-major malfunctions. He began to
review in his mind the procedure for testing the communications bank. It
was a massive undertaking for one man. He'd be finished with it, maybe,
just in time for the relief crew. In the event of a malfunction which he was
unable to repair, he was required to report via Blinkstat to the home office
on Tigian. A tug without communications is useless. If he reported the
signal, and still couldn't account for its origin, they might have to take the
ship back to Tigian before the end of his tour. In that case, there'd be
financial penalties. They would lose all accrued bonus pay.

There had been cases when a crew, with dissension aboard, would
deliberately sabotage a vital piece of equipment so that a relief tug would
be sent out and the unhappy crew could take their tug back to planetside.
All such events were investigated thoroughly.

So, Pete was thinking, what if he called home and they said bring her in
for an overhaul and some smart joker at Stranden decided that there'd
been no malfunction, or if there had been that a crew not composed of
losers such as an Academy kick-out and an ex-hooker could have repaired
it? What if Stranden decided that the man-wife team of Pete and Jan
Jaynes couldn't cut it on a tug?

Now that was something to worry about. Even if he could find another
tug job, that would be the end of heaven. He would not risk losing the
coming years of the joy of being alone with her without exploring all
possibilities. This was a trial tour for the Jayneses, and he wasn't going to
blow it because of some glitch in an electronic system.

And yet he worried. His woman stood beside him, her hip against his
shoulder, and she hurt inside to see the pained look on his face. She'd told
him time and time again that there wasn't a thing wrong with his mind,
not with his deductive reasoning or anything else. But he knew. He was
the one who had failed the tests during his last year at the Academy. He
was the one who had begged the people at Stranden to take on an
inexperienced woman.

"Pete," she whispered, putting her hand atop his to stop his fingers
from their continuous examination of the dent in his skull. "Pete, now you
stop it."

"You're right," he said.

"I'm always right," she said, with a little smile.