"C M Kornbluth - Shark Ship" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

Degerand rudely contradicted his senior officer. "They can't be wiped out clean, Commodore, not
exterminated. The sea is deep. Its genetic potential cannot be destroyed. We merely make temporary
alterations of the feeding balance."



"Seen any sperm whale lately?" the Commodore asked, raising his white eyebrows. "Go get yourself
another helping, captain, before it's gone." It was a dismissal; the foreigner bowed and went to the buffet.



The Commodore asked: "What do you think of him?"



"He has some extreme ideas," Salter said.



"The White Fleet appears to have gone bad," the old man said. "That fellow showed up on a cutter last
week in the middle of harvest wanting my immediate, personal attention. He's on the staff of the White
Fleet Commodore. I gather they're all like him. They've got slack; maybe rust has got ahead of them,
maybe they're over-



breeding. A ship lost its net and they didn't let it go. They cannibalized rigging from the whole fleet to
make a net for it."



"But-"



"But—but—but. Of course it was the wrong thing and now they're all suffering. Now they haven't the
stomach to draw lots and cut their losses." He lowered his voice. "Their idea is some sort of raid on the
Western Continent, that America thing, for steel and bronze and whatever else they find not welded to
the deck. It's nonsense, of course, spawned by a few silly-clever people on the staff. The crews will
never go along with it. Degerand was sent to invite us in!"



Salter said nothing for a while and then: "I certainly hope we'll have nothing to do with it."



"I'm sending him back at dawn with my compliments, and a negative, and my sincere advice to his
Commodore that he drop the whole thing before his own crew hears of it and has him bowspritted." The
Commodore gave him a wintry smile. "Such a reply is easy to make, of course, just after concluding an