"Miller,.Steve.And.Lee,.Sharon.-.Liaden.Universe.03.-.Adventures.In.The.Liaden.Universe.v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Steve)

Determining fall-rate overrode curiosity for this present. He located
a magnetic pole and arranged to have the ship orient thus, then
began a preliminary scan of—well, of wherever it was—as he
slowed rotation smoothly and watched the screens.

Air good. Water probably drinkable. Gravity a bit heavier than the
training planet: within ten percent of Liaden gravity. Preliminary
scan established that this could be any of three or four hundred
worlds.

His ship was moving in, as it must. It had been dropped by an
orbiting mothership, a carefully timed burst of retros killing its
orbital speed. If he worked very hard and was very careful, he
could keep the tiny craft in orbit, but that meant immediate
expulsion, no appeal, unless he could demonstrate equipment
failure...

Instead, he nursed the strictly limited fuel supply by using only
attitude jets, and hurried the computer a little to give him potential
range.

Three hours before he hit serious atmosphere. After that,
depending on his piloting skills and local weather conditions, he
might be in the air for an hour. The world below would turn one and
a half times before he landed. He wondered what Daria would have
thought—

And quashed the thought immediately. Daria was dead, killed in the
drop from the mothership, victim of a freakish solar storm. It had
been stupid of them to be so involved, of course. Stupid and
beautiful.

Daria was months dead now, and Val Con yos’Phelium would be a
scout. Not partnered, as they’d promised so hastily, protected
against all unnamed and unbelieved disasters by the strength of
each other’s arms. Not partnered. But a Scout, nonetheless.

After he passed the test.

He considered the readouts. There were cities down there, yet not
so closely huddled that there weren’t plenty of places to land a
quick, slender craft. His instructions: achieve planetfall; learn the
language, customs, life-forms; survive for six standard months and
sound Recall. This was not the final test, after all, merely the
preliminary. Pass this, then the true Solo and, behold! Scout.
Simplicity itself.

He shook his head and began the second scan. Optimism, he
chided himself half-seriously, is not a survival trait.