"Emil Petaja - The Stolen Sun" - читать интересную книгу автора (Petaja Emil)

Whistles of grudging admiration.

“He must be a mutant. A giant jump in evolution.”

“Or—” Dr. Delph broke off with a vasty sigh.

“Or what, sir?”

“A throwback to an unknown race that had such powers.”

A burst of protest. “But sir! There never was such a race! Not on Terra! Nor anyplace else, as
far as we’ve come!“

“We’re the cream of the crop,” somebody added smugly.

The balding Psych stared into infinity. “Somewhere along the ancestral thread, like a
genetic overfold…”



“Red alert! Red alert!” Lady’s electric arteries put Wayne’s mind on the qui vive.

“Where?”

“Left. Ahead and down.”

“Don’t see a thing in the vid,” Wayne grinned.

“No time for comedy,” Lady said acidly. “Recheck instruments for position. Ready kill-ray.
Confirm speed. Confirm trajectory.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Wayne’s hands went to work on the instrument panel; they snapped on buttons that aimed
the infrared ray on the Mephiti ship’s olfactory nerve center, which Wayne’s nose and the
odor-sensitive detectors had beamed in. As they dipped into Layer Two of the black goop, they
found themselves rapidly nosing toward a lurking sentinal ship of the enemy.

“If we win this war,” Wayne quipped grimly, “we’ll win by a nose.”

Lady was oblivious to his humor at this point. Wayne sent his mind down into the innards
of the shark-shape, checking guns and thrusters. The robotics of Lady accepted his intrusion
with military acumen. Moving up into the ship’s engines, he nudged the accelerators; vectored;
while dipping further into the second layer he made a cortical note of a buzzing connector. A
minor defect, like a human hair out of place, but Wayne took cerebral pride in Lady’s
appearance. Even in her insides. Especially in her insides, since they were most important.

Curious, he sometimes mused, to be roving among his wife’s arteries and organs like this!

“Ten seconds!” Lady’s voice was tart.