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

and go light-years away in the other direction and leave her alone for three
years.

"They take female crew on tugs," she said. "I know they do. I've met
women who work tugs."

The problem was that she had no experience. She had only a
liberal-arts degree. She had been in space just once, the jump from New
Earth to Tigian. Her technical ability was limited to knowing how to turn
on the lights and music in the rented apartment. Pete didn't have much
hope, but he liked the idea. If she thought she dreaded being away from
him for three years, she should have been able to get inside his head and
see the bleak, painful darkness which was growing there with just the
thought of having to say goodbye to her.

He found his personal heaven in the office of the procurement officer of
the Stranden Corporation. Stranden was one of several tug companies
operating off Tigian. It was not one of the leading companies. All tug men
knew companies like Stranden, and, if they had a choice, worked for the
big, glamour companies that furnished deep-space tug service along the
most-traveled routes. All stations on all blink routes were allocated by bid,
and the big companies could afford to bid high for the highly traveled
routes because more traffic meant more ship breakdowns and more
salvage money.

Stranden Corporation's salvage record was terrible, because it was a
low bidder on routes and stations so isolated, so little traveled, that the
chance of a tug's getting a Lloyd's contract on a disabled ship were near
zero. The big, prosperous companies didn't even bother to bid on stations
such as the one occupied by the Stranden 47, or if they did, they bid so
high that there wasn't a chance of getting the station.

Most men went into tug service for two reasons— steady money and the
hope, the chance, for big money. Tugs were free enterprise. The system
was a holdover from thousands of years into the past of old Earth. Because
of the long tours and the smallness of the tugs, because Space Service fleet
ships were huge and luxurious and put into port often, the service got the
cream of the spacegoing crop from each planet. Like the system itself, tug
men were throwbacks.

Tug men were often independent, not fond of taking orders. Some
drank, lived for the months between tours. They earned good money, even
if they didn't get to participate in a rescue or salvage operation, and they
spent it in one continuous spree of drinking and women. Some tug men
were rejects.

Peter Jaynes fell into that category. To a smartly dressed member of the
Space Service, freshly off a luxurious fleet liner, all tug men were weird.
The weirdest of them signed three-year contracts with the fringe
companies such as Stranden.