"Donald Westlake - SH6 - Here's Looking At You" - читать интересную книгу автора (Westlake Donald E)

At long last, the promised sixth and final story in the Starship Hopeful saga has
docked at our space pad. I'll leave it and the other five up for a while. There aren't
enough of the stories to fill out a book, and I won't be doing any more, so this is
where they'll be spending the afterlife. Enjoy.




HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU


by Donald Westlake

From the beginning of Time, man has been on the move, ever outward. First he
spread over his own planet, then across the solar system, then outward to the
Galaxies, all of them dotted, speckled, and measled with the colonies of Man.

Then, one day in the year eleven thousand four hundreds and six (11,406), an
incredible discovery was made in the Master Imperial Computer back on Earth.
Nearly 500 years before, a clerical error had erased from the computer’s memory
more than 1000 colonies, all in sector F.U.B.A.R. 3. For half a millenium, those
colonies, young and struggling when last heard from, had had no contact with the
rest of humanity. The Galaxy Patrol Interstellar Ship Hopeful, Captain Gregory
Standforth commanding, was at once dispatched to re-establish contact with the
Thousand Lost Colonies and return them to the bosom of mankind.




WHEN THE SKY FILLED with the roar of the descending ship, they all
slithered into their holes to wait.


“You know,” Captain Standforth said, unclenching his fingers from the controls
as the ship shuddered its last and sagged onto the ground, “I think I’m beginning to
get the hang of this landing business.”
Groans answered him. Chipper young Lieutenant Billy Shelby, the person who
normally dealt with landings – Captain Standforth was apt to take the term planetfall
literally – managed a cheerful smile and even injected a little perkiness into his voice
as he said, “Much better, sir. Why, this was quite smooth!”
Chief Engineer Hester Hanshaw, blunt in body, mind and mouth, gave Billy a
look. “Not as smooth as you, you little toady.”
 Billy’s handsome if not brilliant face clouded. He said, “What’s a toady?”
Astrogator Pam Stokes, who had been lost in study of her ancestral slide rule,
wondering if it had been damaged in the landing, looked up and said, “Thursday, I
think. Back on Earth, that is.”
In the baffled silence this created, Captain Standforth mused, “It’s that tricky
business of not turning the engines off until you actually touch down; that’s the part
I have the trouble with.”
“If we’ve landed on the damn planet,” Ensign Kybee Benson said, struggling