"Timothy Zahn - Cobra 1 - Cobra" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

Possibly forever.

"You think Alyse would like to see me, huh?" he asked, bringing his eyes back to Jame.

The other nodded. "I'm sure it would make her feel a little better, yeah. Besides which—" He
hesitated. "This may sound silly, but I also think that the more ties you have here in Cedar Lake the
easier it'll be to hold onto your ethics out there."

Jonny snorted. "You mean out among the decadence of the big worlds? Come on, Jame, you don't
really believe that sophistication implies depravity, do you?"

"Of course not. But someone's bound to try and convince you that depravity implies sophistication."

Jonny waved his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Okay; that's it. I've warned you before: the point
where you start with the aphorisms is the point where I bail out of the discussion." Standing up, he
scooped an armful of shirts from the dresser drawer and dumped them beside his suitcase.
"Here—make yourself useful for a change, huh? Pack these and my cassettes for me, if you don't
mind."

"Sure." Jame got up and gave Jonny a lopsided smile. "Take your time; you'll have plenty of chances
to catch up on your sleep on the way to Asgard."

Jonny shook his head in mock exasperation. "One thing I'm not going to miss about this place is
having my own live-in advice service."

It wasn't true, of course... but then, both of them knew that.



The farewells at the Horizon City Port the next morning were as painful as Jonny had expected them
to be, and it was with an almost bittersweet sense of relief that he watched the city fall away beneath
the ground-to-orbit shuttle that would take him to the liner waiting above. Never before had he faced
such a long separation from family, friends, and home, and as the blue sky outside the viewport
gradually faded to black, he wondered if Jame had been right about too many shocks spaced too
closely together. Still... in a way, it seemed almost easier to be changing everything about his life at
once, rather than to have to graft smaller pieces onto a structure that wasn't designed for them. An
old saying about new wine in old wineskins brushed at his memory; the moral, he remembered,
being that a person too set in his ways was unable to accept anything at all that was outside his
previous experience.

Overhead, the first stars were beginning to appear, and Jonny smiled at the sight. His way of life on
Horizon had certainly been comfortable, but at twenty-one he had no intention of becoming rigidly
attached to it. For the first time since enlisting, a wave of exhilaration swept through him. Jame,
stuck at home, could choose to see Jonny's upcoming experiences as uncomfortable shocks if he
wanted to... but Jonny was going to treat them instead as high adventure.

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