"Andre Norton - The X Factor 2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

launching cradle carefully. The port was closed, the ladder up, and the
watcher would control both of those. But a watcher was not only there to check
invasion; it was also attuned to any change in the ship. Diskan swung down
into the cradle, put where the port inspectors had their scan-plate. He forced
himself to move slowly. There must be no mistake in the false set of the dial
he wanted. Sweat beaded his cheeks and chin when he achieved that bit of
manipulation. Up out of the pit—to wait. A grating noise from above marked the
opening port. The ladder fed out smoothly. This was itl Diskan tensed. The
watch robot, once out of the ship, would sense him instantly, come for him. A
watcher could not kill or even do bodily harm; it only captured and held its
prisoner to be dealt with by human authority. And Diskan must allow himself to
be so captured to serve his purpose. There was a clatter; the robot swung down
the ladder and turned quickly to rush him. A thief would have run, tried to
dodge. Diskan stood very still. The first rush of the machine slackened. It
might have been disconcerted by his waiting for it, wondering if he had some
legitimate reason to be there. Now if he had known the code word of its
conditioning, he would have had nothing in the world to fear, but he did not
have that knowledge. A capture net whirled out, flicked about him, drew Diskan
toward the machine; and he went without struggling. The net, meant to handle a
fighter, was loose about him. He was almost up to his captor when he
sprang—not away from but toward the robot. And for the first time that Diskan
could remember, his heavy bulk of body served him well. He crashed against the
machine, and the force of that meeting rocked the robot off balance. It went
down, dragging Diskan with it, but his arm was behind its body, and before
they had rolled over, he had thrust one forefinger into the sensitive
direction cell. Pain such as he had never known, running from his finger up
his arm to the shoulder—the whole world was a haze of that pain. But somehow
Diskan jerked away, held so much to his purpose that he had dragged himself
part way up the ladder before his consciousness really functioned clearly
again. Those who had told him of this trick had always used a tool to break
the cell. To do it by finger was lunacy on a level they would not have
believed possible. Diskan, racked with pain, stumbled through the hatch.
Sweating and gasping, he got to his feet, slammed his good hand down on the
close button, and then swayed on—up one more level. The wall lights glowed as
he went, obeying the command triggered by his body heat. He had a blurred
glimpse of the cradle of the pilot's seat and half fell into it. Somehow he
managed to lean forward, to fumble the disk out of his pocket and into the
auto-pilot, to thumb down the controls. The spacer came to We and took over.
Around Diskan arose the cradle of the seat. His injured hand was engulfed in a
pad that appeared out of nowhere. He felt the stab of a needle as the tremble
of the atomics began to vibrate the walls. Diskan was already half into freeze
and did not hear, save as a blur of meaningless words, the demand broadcast as
those in Control suddenly realized an unauthorized take-off was in progress.
He was under treatment for an injured pilot as the racer made its dart, at
maximum, up from Vaanchard on the guide of the red tape. To a man in freeze,
time did not exist. Measure of it began again for Diskan with a sharp,
demanding clang, a noise biting at his very flesh and bones. He fought the
pressure of that noise, the feeling of the necessity for responding to it.
Opening his eyes wearily, he found himself facing a board of levers, switches,
flashing lights. Two of those lights were an ominous red. Diskan knew nothing