"Jerry Pournelle - Extreme Prejudice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pournelle Jerry)

caught an economic saboteur and put him away at Lewisburg. Our director decided he knew too much
and would probably be exchanged, so they sent me in after him. I tagged him in two weeks, but it took
another six to spring me, and by the time I came out I looked like a slug. I felt like one, too. Ever since
then, I’ve been sure prisons don’t rehabilitate anyone. Problem is, what does?
“This is Gideon Starr,” Peterson said. “Admiral Kingsley.”
We exchanged pleasantries and Kingsley offered drinks. I took mine and sat in a big
government-issue easy-chair, the kind they have in the Pentagon, or at Langley. It seemed like an old
friend.
“Mr. Starr,” said Kingsley, “you’ve got real pull. We’ve never had a visitor here with an endorsement
like yours, from the Secretary.”
And if you’re lucky you won’t again, I thought, but I said, “Well, it’s getting close to budget review
time. A few enthusiastic articles wouldn’t hurt your research appropriation.”
He smiled at that, and Peterson practically beamed. “That’s a fact,” Peterson muttered. “Actually, if
they’d just let us keep some of the profits we’d be all right. How many research efforts actually make
money?”
I shrugged. “I’ll do my best, anyway.”
Kingsley beamed this time. “Well. We’re to show you around and then let you direct yourself,” he
said. “Orientation’ll take a while, though. There’s a lot here, Mr. Starr. And a lot of ways for a man who
doesn’t know what he’s doing to get killed.”
“Yeah.” There were a lot of ways for a man who did know what he was doing to get killed, too.
Most of “em had been tried on me at one time or another. ”I’ve got a diver’s, card, and some
underwater experience,“ I said. ”I think I know what to look out for.“
“It’s a start,” Kingsley agreed. “Well, you may as well begin sightseeing.” He reached out to his desk
console Sad pushed a button,. Curtains opened on the wall behind him.
There were artificial lights, as well as the sunlight filtering down to this depth. Big fronds waved in
slow motion, an underwater forest just outside his office. I could barely see the grid that held the kelp
below us. There were shelves sticking out of every structure and shaft, and lots of shafts. Coral in , bright
reds and blues grew from the shelves, and barnacles, and shellfish—there and on long lines that dangled
down from the surface. Fish darted through “the kelp fronds. It was a dynamic color picture that’d never
come through on a TV. screen. I couldn’t wait to get out there in it, and I told them so.
They exchanged grins. I expect every tourist says the same thing. If anybody could visit that place
and not want to get outside, he was dead or might as well be.
“Yes. Well, perhaps first an orientation tour?” Peterson said. “I really don’t know how familiar you
are with what we’re doing here at Dansworth.”
“Not at all,” I told him. “I’m primarily an aerospace writer. I’ve done some diving, but not much
serious study of seapower stations. You’d better assume I don’t know anything at all.”
The nice part about it was I was telling the truth. Not all of it, but no lies.
The admiral hit another button and more curtains opened. There was a 3-D map behind them, a
holograph tank, and by manipulating his desk console he could show things at different levels. He started
with the bare floor of the Pacific. It was crosshatched with very regular lines, a checkerboard of racks in
the bottom, and about sixteen thousand feet deep. Dansworth Seamount rose steeply from the -floor to
within seven hundred feet of the surface. It stood there all by itself, with nothing around, at least not on
that map.
“Dansworth,” Peterson said. “The deep gash next to it is Shatterton Fissure. The geologists are
having a field day here.”
“Um.” I wasn’t really interested in the geology. The theories change every year, so what’s the point in
studying up on them? I like technology, though, and I’m a pretty good writer. I think I could make a living
at it even if Langley didn’t use influence to get my stuff placed in important magazines. I’ll never find out,
of course. You don’t quit in my job. I didn’t want to, anyway.
Kingsley did something to the console and the scale changed to show only Dansworth Seamount and