"Murray Leinster - The Duplicators" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

Leavin' the oiled tarmac on fire." Link winced. The little man went on inexorably, "We hit for space at six gees
acceleration and 'near as I can make out you kept goin' at that till the first rockets burned out. And then you went down into
the mess room."
"I suppose," said Link unhappily, "that I'd worked up an appetite. Or was there some way I could pile up a few more years
to spend in jail?"
"You went to sleep," said the little man. "And I wasn't goin' to bother you!"
Link thought it over.
"No," he agreed. "I can see that you mightn't have wanted to bother me. Do you intend to turn around and go back to
Trent?"
"What for?" demanded the little man bitterly. "For jail? An' for them to sell off the Glamorgan for port dues and such?"
"There's that, of course," acknowledged Link. "But I'd rather believe you wouldn't leave a friend in distress, or jail. All
right. I don't want to go back to Trent either. I'm an out-doorsy sort of character and I wouldn't like to spend the next
eighteen years in jail."
"Twenty-two," said Thistlethwaite. "And six months."
"So," finished' Link, "I'll play along. Since I'm the astro-gator I'll try to find out where we are. Then you'll tell me where
you want to go. And after that, some evening when there's nothing special to do, you'll tell me why. Right?"
"The why," snapped the whiskery man, "is I promised
to make you so rich y'couldn't spend the interest on y'moneyl And you a junior partner!"
"Carynths?" suggested Link.
Carynths were the galaxy's latest and most fabulous status1 gems. They couldn't be synthesized—they were said to be the
result of meteoric impacts on a special peach-colored ore—and they were as beautiful as they were rare. So far they'd only
been found on Glaeth. But if a woman had a carynth ring, she was somebody. If she had a carynth bracelet, she was
Somebody. And if she had a carynth necklace, she ruled society on the planet on which she was pleased to reside. But—
"Carynths are garbage," said Thisthethwaite contemptuously, "alongside of what's waitin' for us! For each one of what I'm
tradin' for, to bring it away from where we're goin', I'll get a hundred million credits an' half the profits after that! An' I'll
have a shipload of e'm! And it's all set! Now you do your stuff and I'll check over the engines."
He headed down the stairwell. He reached the first landing below. The second. Link heard a faint click and then a
mechanical grunting noise. At the sound, the little man howled enragedly. Link jumped.
"What's the matter?" he asked anxiously.
"We're leakin' air!" roared the little man. "Bleedin' it! You musta started some places, takin' off at six gees! All the air's
pourin' out!"
His words became unintelligible, but they were definitely profane. Doors clanged shut, cutting off his voice. He was
sealing all compartments.
Link surveyed the control room of the ship. In his younger days he'd aspired to be a spaceman. He'd been a cadet in the
Merchant Space Academy on Malibu for two complete terms. Then the faculty let him go. He liked novelty and excitement
and on occasion, tumult. The faculty didn't. His grades were all right but they heaved him out. So he knew
a certain amount about astrogation. Not much, but enough to keep from having to go back to Trent.
A door closed below. The little man's voice could be heard, swearing sulfurously. He got something from somewhere and
the door clanged behind him again, cutting off his voice once more.
Link resumed his survey. There was the control board, reasonably easy to understand.. There was the computer, simple
enough for him to operate. There were reference books. A Galactic Directory for this sector. Alditeh's Practical
Astrogation. A luridly bound volume of Space-Commerce Regulations. The Directory was brand new. The others were old
and tattered volumes.
Link went carefully over the ship's log, which contained every course steered, time elapsed, and therefore distance run in
parsecs and fractions of them. He could take the Glamorgan back to the last three ports she'd visited by reversing the
recorded maneuvers. But that didn't seem enterprising.
He skimmed through the Astrogator. He'd be somewhere not too many millions of miles from the sun of the planet Trent.
He'd take a look at the Trent listing in the Directory, copy out its coordinates and proper motion, check the galactic poles
and zero galactic longitude by observation out the ports, and then get at the really tricky stuff when he learned the ship's
destination.