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

He ran stress and wave analysis a second time, and the results were the
same. His ship's communications bank and the blink beacon had recorded
the signal at the same time.

Jan's face had gone serious. She sat in her command chair and watched
Pete play with the computer, running the two signals through for
comparison again and again. She was silent. She knew him well now, and
she knew that when he was doing serious thinking he didn't like to be
distracted.

He punched instructions, and the two tapes played together. Then he
began to slow the speed of play, and the sound changed tones, but began
to be stretched out. They both heard the difference in the two tapes at the
same time when Pete had the momentary sound stretched out for a full
ten seconds.

The tape of the blink beacon had recorded something which was not
on Stranden 47's tape. That additional something was not signal. It was
more a distortion of the coating of the tape.

"Defect in manufacture?" Pete muttered, running the two sounds
again. "No," he said, in answer to his own question.

He had Jan dig out a technical manual and bent over it for a few
minutes.

"Find anything?" Jan asked when he looked up.

"I don't know," he said. "It may have been an emission of a kind of
energy which the tape was not designed to print."

"So?" she asked.
 "I'd like to check the next beacon down the New Earth range."

"Ummm," she said. It was not up to her to remind him that he'd defied
company and Space Service policy by leaving station without first
Blink-stating his intentions to the home office. She knew that he was
taking a chance that there would be no traffic through their remote
junction of space routes during the few minutes it took to blink out and
check the blink beacon's tape and then blink back home.

The generator's charge was building to a power which caused Jan's hair
to tend to stand out straight. Her skin tingled. She had a thought which
sent a smile to warm her face. Making love during a generator charge was,
well, it was just wow.

Pete began to punch the coordinates for the jump back to the station.
He'd decided that it was too risky to blink farther away from his assigned
place to check another beacon's tape. He was about ready to call the home