"Daniel Keys Moran - Lord November" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moran Daniel Keys)

that he clutched, closed, in both hands.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
"Final life support checks." Peaceforcer Evan's tone of voice was bored, the nothing-wrong-here
drawl affected by pilots for more than a century. Evans himself, United Nations Peace Keeping Force
Officer though he was, was a good Catholic who regularly failed to report his colleague's treasonable
talk. Bear Corona suited up next to him, an Excalibur Series One slung across his back; Evans bore the
same weapon himself. "Sheila, check Father Michael for me."
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Standing near the rear of the suiting room, Father Michael straightened at the sound of his name, and
with easy self-control tucked the Bible that he had been holding into an outer pocket of his pressure suit.
Breaking away from the others, Sheila Moore, a plump, rather plain molecular biologist with whom
Father Wellsmith often played chess in the evenings, came back to check his vitals for him. She was with
the party because she had taken a course in exobiology ten years prior: such as it was, that background
made her the closest thing the colony had to an expert on aliens.
She found the Bible in the outer pocket, and scolded, "You forgot to seal the pocket. You want to be
more careful." At Ganymean temperatures, even plastipaper grew fragile and shattered. She clipped his
helmet photo diode to his earlobe, and turned it on; the vampire gauge paused a moment before flickering
to life.
..mark Take text from Ecclesiastes.
She glanced quickly at the Bible before sealing the pocket; the bookmark was in Ecclesiastes. He
would be reading the most depressing book in the damn Bible.
The voice from Control came across the outspeaker: "Sergeant Evans, Bear, I've got some new stuff.
The Zaradin transmitted a new message to us."
Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil.
"Largely bad news. They're saying that we'd better bring out our--uh, defiler of truths is how the
computer is translating it- -or we'll be sorry. They said they'd demonstrate how sorry we'd be. Nothing
on that yet."
There was a brief pause before conversation resumed. Bear Corona said, "Pushy bastards, aren't--"
The landscape outside the window glared in a sudden wash of light.
Peaceforcer Evans said calmly, locking his gloves into place, "Control? What is it?"
"--I think--I think they just blew Europa out of the sky."

The large airlock finished cycling. Peaceforcer Evans, Bear Corona, Sheila Moore, and Father
Michael moved forward, onto the frozen ground, in slow, gliding steps. The stars above shone bright and
hard. The cold sunlight glared down at them; their faceplates polarized away most of it.
In the southern portion of their sky, about ten degrees from Jupiter, hung a bright, slowly expanding
cloud of debris.
Bear Corona moved next to Father Michael, and sketched "C4" on Father Michael's faceplate.
Father Michael switched to the sideband.
"Father," he said, "been wondering what your plans are."
"I don't really know, Bear." Behind the polarized faceplate, drops of sweat gathered on Father
Michael's forehead. The inside of his suit stank with the smell of all old pressure suits, of ancient human
sweat and metallic, recycled air.
They moved forward inexorably toward the alien ship, ground gliding away beneath their feet.
Bear Corona said patiently, "Are you going to do what they want you to do? Or are you going to tell
them to go to hell again?"
Father Michael did not take his eyes from the ship. Closer still. "I don't know. I don't know whatt
they want me to do. Bear- -"
"Yes?"
"I suspect you of having made up some of the sins you confessed."