"Murray Leinster - Proxima Centauri" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

alarms.”
Alstair stood still, struggling with the rage which still possessed him.
Then he nodded curtly.
“Quite right. You did good work. Stand by.”
And, quite cool and composed, he took command of the mighty space ship,
even if there was not much for him to do. In five minutes, in fact, every
possible preparation for emergency had been made and he turned again to Jack.
“I don’t like you,” he said coldly. “As one man to another, I dislike
you intensely. But as vice commander and acting commander at the moment, I
have to admit that you did good work in uncovering this little trick of our
friends to get wit-hin striking -distance without our knowing they were
anywhere near.”
Jack said nothing. He was frowning, but it was because he was thinking
of Helen. The Adastra was huge and powerful, but she was not readily
maneuverable. She was enormously massive, but she could not be used for
ramming. And she possessed within herself almost infInite destructiveness, in
the means of producing Caidwell fields for the disintegration of matter, but
she contained no weapon more dangerous than a two thousand kilowatt vortex gun
for the destruction of dangerqus animals or vegetation where she might
possibly land.
“What’s your comment?” demanded Aistair shortly. “How do you size up the
situation?”
“They act as if they’re planning hostilities,” replied Jack briefly,
“and they’ve got four times our maximum acceleration so we can’t get away.
With that acceleration they ought to be more maneuverable, so we can’t dodge
them. We’ve no faintest idea of what weapons they carry, but we know that we
can’t fight them unless their weapons are very puny indeed. There’s just one
chance that I can see.”
“What’s that?”
“They tried to slip up on us. That looks as if they intended to open
fire without warning. But maybe they are frightened and only expected to
examine us without our getting a chance to attack them. In that case, our only
bet is to swing over our signaling beam to the space ship. When they realize
we know they’re there and still aren’t getting hostile, they may not guess we
can’t fight. They may think we want to be friendly and they’d better not start
anything with a ship our size that’s on guard.”
“Very well. You’re detailed to communication duty,” said Aistair. “Go
ahead and carry out that program. I’ll consult the rocket engineers and see
what they can improvise in the way of fighting equipment. Dismiss!”
His tone was harsh.’ It was arrogant. It rasped Jack’s nerves and made
him bristle all over. But he had to recognize that Aistair wasn’t letting his
frank dislike work to the disadvantage of the ship. Aistair was, in fact, one
of those ambitious officers who are always cordially disliked by everybody, at
all times, until an emergency arises. Then their competence shows up.
Jack went to the communications-control room. It did not take long to
realign the transmitter beam. Then the sender began to repeat monotonously the
recorded last message from the Adastra to the distant and so far unidentified
planet of the ringed star. And while the signal went-out, over and over again,
Jack called on observations control for a sight Of the strange ship.
They had a scanner on it now and by stepping up illumination to the