"Murray Leinster - Checkpoint Lambda" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

traveling back to it. But the ship itself would get there before its broadcast.
Another warning to passengers. A gong. A countdown. Then there was dizziness once more, and the
feeling of falling, and intolerable nausea. The screens flickered and rearranged the innumerable
specks of light which were stars. And then, suddenly, the sun Canis Lambda was blindingly bright
with a disk half-a-degree across, and the call from the ceiling speaker became a shout for the fraction
of a syllable before the automatic volume-control cut it down.
The skipper looked pleased. One does not often have a chance to show off before a Patrol man. He
watched complacently, giving no orders, while the direction of the checkpoint signal was ascertained
and its distance measured. Then the liner began to drive toward it on that slow solar system drive by
which men first explored the planets of the First System. It was necessary for lift-offs and landings.
But Scott stared ahead. The Five Comets were heading in toward the sun; five separate luminosities,
some larger and some smaller, some with enormous trailing tails and others with lesser ones. All were
concentrated in one very small region of the sky.
Scott didn't like the look of things, but unless he knew their distance he couldn't tell how close
together they really were. Even then, distances in space were
not easily realized. There was no believable sensation of depth where astronomical objects were
concerned. Everything looked flat. It was impossible to see more than angular relationships. Actual
distances were no more than numerals on paper. But still Scott didn't like what he saw.
"Very nice work," he said politely. "I'll go get into my vacuum-suit. I'll be back by the time you've
raised the buoy."
He went back to his cabin and changed his civilian clothes for his uniform. He put on the Patrol space
suit that was so much less bulky than the vacuum equipment used on merchant ships. It took a
considerable tune. Then he picked up the report he'd prepared and returned to the control room. The
skipper was red-faced and angry and apprehensive.
"Look here!" he greeted Scott indignantly. "They got our approach-call. They said, 'What ship's that?'
When I told them they didn't answer! They don't answer now!"
As if deliberately to contradict him, the communicator-speaker said harshly. "There is nothing to
come aboard you. No freight or passengers will be accepted. Proceed on your voyage. Message
ends."
The skipper looked at Scott.
"What am I to do?"
"Proceed on your voyage," said Scott drily," as far as the space buoy." He hesitated a moment, then
said, "As an extreme precaution, put a man by the overdrive button. Set it up to move the ship a short
jump away — if they get too insistent."
The skipper gave orders. Even a brief period in overdrive would put the liner beyond this solar
system. Up to now, the skipper had been concerned only because he had a passenger who might be
refused by Lambda. There was no precedent to tell him what to do. But Scott had asked for a
precaution which made it more than mere irregularity on the part of the
checkpoint. There was more wrong here than passengers who didn't change ship and freight that
wasn't accepted. Scott had come to that conclusion earlier. The skipper said uncomfortably, "I don't
understand this!"
Scott replied, "Presently, you will."
To him the situation was self-evident. The Golcon-da Ship was coming back from wherever it had
gone on its fifth treasure-hunting voyage. It was going to make port at Checkpoint Lambda instead of
a normal space port. It planned to distribute its riches among the financial institutions of a dozen or a
hundred worlds instead of one. It was a very sound idea provided that the secret of its intention —
which even now Scott didn't feel he could reveal — and the time of its arrival remained unknown to
anybody but the commanding officer of Checkpoint Lambda, until after the operation was over.
But that apparently hadn't happened.
Taking into consideration a leak in highly classified information, and the report about the passengers