"Maxine McArthur - Time Future" - читать интересную книгу автора (McArthur Maxine)

"The Seouras? Are they doing anything?" Perhaps they knew that any
ship caught in a jump mine would no longer be a threat. Perhaps their
sensors had been disrupted by the comet sooner than we'd expected.
"There's nothing from them."

"Keep monitoring it. I'll be right up." The screen darkened.

There was a short moment of frozen disbelief, then the others scrambled
for the door.

I glared my way through first--rank has its privileges-and walked
quickly to the nearest ring lift Murdoch close behind me. The
throughway outside the building was crowded and his bulk came in
handy.

Veatch, who had left before Baudin's message, was waiting in front of
the ring lift and he looked around with a surprised tilt of his
antennae as we rushed up. The door opened.

"Going up?" Murdoch reached past Veatch and tapped in the code for the
command center.

"Yes." Veatch was unsure of the protocol for rhetorical questions,
although he often gave what I felt were rhetorical answers to my
sensible questions.

The doors wheezed shut and the floor pressed briefly against our feet
as the ring lift rose to Alpha level.

"How could it possibly have been set off?" said Murdoch.

I shook my head. "I've never heard of one blowing by itself. Has to
be a ship."

Jump mines, weapons left over from the war between the Confederacy and
the Tor, were seeded indiscriminately across the sector by the T,or and
activate when a ship leaves a jump to return to normal space. Most of
the mines have been collected or destroyed, but the number of places
possible for a jump in or out of hyperspace were limited and
occasionally these points drifted into a forgotten mine. Big
traders and Con Fleet ships had all developed defense grids, so the
main casualties were small or obsolete craft.

"Commander?" Veatch conveyed censure without frowning.

"We detected a jump mine that activated within the system," I
explained, fidgeting against the slowness of the lift. "On the edge of
the asteroids."

"I see."