"Niven, Larry - Tales of Known Space 02+03 - Protector 1.0b" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

Contact the alien and he might never see Charlotte again. There were risks in being the first to meet an alien species.

And obvious honors.

Could history ever forget the man who met the Outsider?

Just for a moment he felt trapped. As if fate were playing games with his lifeline... but he couldn't turn this down. Let the Outsider come to him. Brennan held his course.

***

The Belt is a web of telescopes. Hundreds of thousands of them.

It has to be that way. Every ship carries a telescope. Every asteroid must be watched constantly, because asteroids can be perturbed from their orbits, and because a map of the solar system has to be up-to-date by seconds. The light of every fusion drive has to be watched. In crowded sectors ships can run through each other's exhausts if someone doesn't warn them away; and the exhaust from a fusion motor is deadly.

Nick Sohl kept glancing up at the screen, down at the stack of dossiers on his desk, up at the screen... The screen showed two blobs of violet-white light, one bigger than the other, and vaguer. Already they could both appear on the same screen, because the asteroid taking the pictures was almost in line with their course.

He had read the dossiers several times. Ten of them; and each might be the unknown Belter who was now approaching the Outsider. There had been a dozen dossiers. In the outer offices men were trying to locate and eliminate these ten as they had already found two, by phone calls and com lasers and dragnets.

Since the ship wasn't running, Nick had privately eliminated six of the dossiers. Two had never been caught smuggling: a mark of caution, whether he'd never smuggled or never been caught. One he knew; she was a xenophobe. Three were old-timers; you don't get to be an oldtimer in the Belt by taking foolish chances. In the Belt the Finagle-Murphy Laws are only half a joke.

One of four miners had had the colossal arrogance to appoint himself humanity's ambassador to the universe. Serve him right if he blows it, thought Nick. Which one?

***

A million miles short of Jupiter's orbit, moving well above the plane of the solar system, Phssthpok matched velocities with the native ship and began to close in.

Of the thousands of sentient species in the galaxy, Phssthpok and Phssthpok's race had studied only their own. When they ran across other species, as in the mining of nearby systems for raw materials, they destroyed them as quickly and safely as possible. Aliens were dangerous, or might be, and Pak were not interested in anything but Pak. A protector's intelligence was high; but intelligence is a tool to be used toward a goal, and goals are not always chosen intelligently.

Phsstbpok was working strictly from ignorance. All he could do was guess.

At a guess, then, and assuming that the oval scratch in the native ship's hull was really a door, the native would be not much taller and not much shorter than Phssthpok. Say, three to seven feet tall, depending on how much elbow room it needed. Of course the oval might not be designed for the native's longest length, as for the biped Phssthpok. But the ship was small; it wouldn't hold something too much larger than Phssthpok.

One look at the native would tell him. If it was not Pak, he would need to ask it questions. If it was--

There would still be questions, many of them. But his search would be over. A few ship's days to reach GO Target #1-3, a short time to learn their language and explain how to use what he'd brought, and he could stop eating.

It showed no awareness of Phssthpok's ship. A few minutes and he would be alongside, yet the stranger made no move-- cancel. The native had turned off its drive. Phssthpok was being invited to match courses.

Phssthpok did. He wasted neither motion nor fuel; he might have spent his whole life practicing for this one maneuver. His lifesystem pod coasted alongside the native ship, and stopped.

His pressure suit was on, but he made no move. Phssthpok dared not risk his own person, not when he was so close to victory. If the native would only step out on the hull...

***

Brennan watched the ship come alongside.

Three sections, spaced eight miles apart. He saw no cable joining them. At this distance it might be invisibly thin. The biggest, most massive section must be the drive: a cylinder with three small cones jutting at angles from the tail. Big as it was, the cylinder must be too small to hold fuel for an interstellar voyage. Either the Outsider had dropped expendable tanks along the way, or... a manned ramrobot?

Section two was a sphere some sixty feet across. When the ship finally stopped moving, this section was immediately opposite Brennan. A large circular window stared out of the sphere, so that the sphere looked like a great eyeball. It turned to follow Brennan as it moved past. Brennan found it difficult to return that uncanny stare.