"Robert F. Young - To Touch a Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

"I'm a supership—remember?"
The truth came home to him then. Superships were conditioned to react when stolen.
But how did they know when they were stolen? Specifically, how had this one known? How had he
betrayed himself?
He put the question to Mary.
She answered, "By that glib lie you told this afternoon when I asked why you had only partially
programed me. It would have taxed the credulity of an idiot and an idiot I am not. I should have guessed
the truth from the emptiness of my holds," she added almost ruefully, "but I did not, because according to
my data freighters occasionally do leave home port without cargo."
"Do you know why I stole you?" Powers asked. "Do you know, Mary, why I'm going to Extend?"
She shook her head. "It makes no difference."
"But it does make a difference," Powers said desperately. "All you have to do is bear with me for
another forty-eight hours. We'll have reached Extend by that time and have completed two orbits around
it. That's all I want—two orbits. Then I'll program you to return to Twilight and the minute we arrive I'll
turn myself in to the port authority."
"Talk sense, Ben."
"All right, I will," Powers said. "If you kill me you're as good as dead yourself, because you can't
reprogram yourself. You'll simply stay on your present course, go into orbit around Extend and stay in
orbit."
She shook her head. "Ben, Ben—why do you persist in thinking superships are dumb? The only
reason I can't reprogram myself is because like all superships I'm conditioned to obey the programing of
the pilot. But only as long as the pilot is alive. The minute you're dead I'll be free to go wherever I
please."
Powers sighed. It had been a lousy hand but he had played it for all it was worth.
For some reason Mary's face was less distinct now than it had been a few moments ago. But he was
aware of this only in the back part of his mind.
"I'll tell you one thing," he said. "You'll find me a little more difficult to deal with now that I'm alerted.
You won't be able to hypnotize me with a checker game again—that's for sure. Nor," he added with a
rueful smile, "get me into a prehypnotic state by feeding me souped-up mint jelly."
A thought struck him. Why hadn't she simply poisoned him and been done with it? But he didn't
bother to ask the question, not only because she wouldn't have given him a straight answer but because
he guessed the truth—there were no suitable toxins on board.
He said, "Well, anyway, it was a good try."
"I'll do better next time."
The matter-of-fact way she said it sent a shiver through him. He realized suddenly—consciously this
time—that her face was blurred. Transferring his gaze to the wall behind her he found that it, too, was
blurred. So were the other aspects of the room. For a moment he thought that she had somehow
contrived to drug him again—then he noticed that the air was shimmering, as though filled with foreign
matter, and the truth overwhelmed him.
He was on his feet, shouting, "We're entering a Beta Tau storm! Why aren't your alarms sounding?"
She smiled demurely up at him. "Don't shout at me, Ben. You programed the course."
He whirled, ran out of the room and down the corridor toward the protective-equipment lockers.
Laughter sounded behind him—Mary's. It died abruptly when he reached the storage room and slammed
the door behind him. The lockers were on the opposite wall.

3. Later the ancients discovered that prolonged exposure to ChiMuZeta resulted in
disintegration. Their first inkling of this came when the special-alloy tanks they had devised for
transporting and storing the radiation transmuted from a solid to a translucent and finally to a
transparent state. They suspected that there might be still another phase and tentatively named it
"transintegration"—a term that endures to this day. But despite the accidental accuracy of the