"Barry Longyear - Adagio (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Longyear Barry)

"They're okay. Osborn got the lines shut down before too much fuel escaped. What's Forrest got in
mind?"
Forrest's voice entered his helmet. "We can try for a dead-stick landing. If you can rig the
steering jets, Tobias, the computer says we have a chance of
making it through the atmosphere."
"How much of a chance?"
Forrest laughed. "Don't ask." He became quiet. "We have a better chance at making a landing than
we have trying to stay alive up here. Can you rig something?"
Tobias looked around the engineering deck, the challenges of practical necessity temporarily
crowding out projections of disaster and demise. With the board shot there would be some wiring to
do. He'd have to work off the batteries. And some plumbing, not to mention readjusting the
steering jets to use main-plant fuel. He didn't really know if that could be done. But there was
something else. The entry heat would turn aft engineering into a furnace.
"Forrest, I can make a try at the steering jets, but something has to be done about those holes in
the hull."
"Get to work on the jets. When you're ready, I'll help you with the holes. We can snatch some
plate from somewhere."
Tobias pushed up and began working his way toward aft engineering. He loved doing wiring in
atmospheric long johns. It was like doing watch repair while wearing a pair of boxing gloves. The
failing gravity would just make it interesting.
He punched the switch, and the hatch swung slightly open and jammed. With his foot he kicked it
the rest of the way open. He stood in the hatch and looked into the darkness of the engine room.
The only light came from the holes in the hull. Tobias knew that some of those flickers were
stars, but most of them were too bright for that. The bright
ones were the remains of the crumbled planets that formed the Oids Belt in orbit around a sun
called Mantchee.
Merchant crews don't like the Oids Belt and never go there. The union even got it in the contract.
Asteroids, planetoids, and paranoids. Tobias still had one of the buttons that says I AVOID THE
OIDS.


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But there were passengers and parts to pick up and deliver to strange and wonderful places, and a
pilot who believed in shortcuts more than he did in minimum safety or union contracts. Tobias
swore that if he and the pilot managed to live through the landing, Tobias's first planet-side act
would be to murder Mikizu.
First things first.
He returned, grabbed Osborn, and dislodged the engineering chief's body from the rapidly freezing
fluids that were pinning his ass to the deck.
Pulling the body to the hatch, Tobias pushed it toward the large hole at his feet.
The still form somersaulted slowly toward the hole and jerked to a halt. Tobias pulled the light
from his belt and aimed the beam at the opening.
The back of Osborn's head had been speared and snagged by the hole's ragged edge. One of the thick
splinters of metal protruded from Osborn's left eye.
Someday the geniuses will figure out how to puke in a space suit. He turned away.
"this thing will serve us if we obey it"
"how will it serve"
"it will stop pain and death"