"Chad Oliver - The Winds of Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oliver Chad)

"I'll get him," Arvon said.
He got up and went back along the main corridor to the library. As he had expected, Derryoc was
there, seated at a long table, squinting into a viewer. The anthropologist had films scattered all over the
place, and had managed to accumulate a fair-sized collection of empty glasses, a few of which still had
liquor in them.
Probably, Arvon thought, the man hadn't even noticed the rough passage when they had pulled out of
the distortion field. Not because he was drunk, of course—Arvon had never seen Derryoc drunk despite
the amount of drink he stowed away. But when he got immersed in one of his problems, the rest of the
world might as well not exist. It was a habit of mind that Arvon recognized but found impossible to
understand.
"Derryoc," he said.
The anthropologist waved a hand irritably. "Minute," he said.
Arvon gave him his minute, then tried again. "We're landing in twelve hours. Seyehi wants to get set
up for a scan."
The anthropologist looked up. There were dark circles under his, eyes, and his hair hadn't been
combed in a week. He was a big man, running a little to fat, but he had an air of competence about him.
Arvon had always rather liked Derryoc, but the anthropologist kept his distance. Derryoc tended to feel
that anyone who wasn't a scientist of some sort really wasn't worth fooling with; Arvon knew he was just
a playboy to him despite the zoology he had learned to qualify for the trip.
"Twelve hours?"
"Yes. We're out in normal space again."
"I wondered what was wrong with the damn lights." He pushed the viewer back, stood up, and
stretched.
"Think we'll find anything this time?" Arvon asked.
The anthropologist looked at him. "No. Do you?"
Arvon shook his head. "No, but I hope we do."
"Hope's tricky. Don't rely on it. You know how many planets we've checked, counting all the ships
that have ever gone out?"
 "Around a thousand, I'd guess."
"One thousand two hundred and one, counting our last stop. So the odds are one thousand two
hundred and one to one that we'll find what we always find."
"Statistics can be misleading."
"Not like hopes, Arvon. Always bet with the odds and you come out ahead."
"Mind if I come along to the control room with you?"
"Not at all." Derryoc smiled. "What's the matter—Nlesine wearing your hopes down?"
"Something like that," Arvon admitted.
The two men walked out of the library, into the corridor. They walked slowly toward the control
room, and as they walked the ship around them floated through the great night, toward a new sun and
new worlds—and, perhaps, a new answer to the problem that faced them all, the problem that had to be
solved.
Inside the control room the atmosphere of the ship was subtly different. It was not a physical change;
no gauge or meter could have registered the tension in that air. It was a question of personality. It was
there, and you responded to it, but it was not easy to pin down.
Partly it was the room itself. At sea the man at the wheel is the man who feels the waves and the
currents and the dark depths below, and it is not otherwise with the ships that sail that mightier sea of
space.
Partly it was Hafij. The navigator was a man at home in space as other men never were; his thin body
and his black eyes, remote as the stars themselves, belonged in this room, and were a part of it. It would
not be true to say that he loved the dark recesses between the worlds, but he was drawn to them as a
man is drawn to his woman, and to them he always returned.