Forstchen, William R Into the Sea of Stars

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trying to punch someone in zero G.
It took Shelley several minutes to subdue Ellen and pull her out of the room.
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"Not nice, Richard," Ian said admonishingly.
"But it was fun."
Knowing that the intercom line was hot, Ian didn't reply immediately. After thinking
their situation over for a few minutes, he said, "All right, Stasz, punch us up for Delta Sag.
But this time I think I'll stay back here with the flask and ride it out."
And when the drive finally kicked in with a vision-blurring jolt, Ian could barely tell if it
was the gin or distortion that caused him to black out.
When the detection alarm kicked in, Ian and Shelley were hunched over the display board
examining some of the records from Unit 287. For two weeks they had spent every waking
moment checking out the video recordings and the historical data stored aboard the vessel.
Ian was still in a state near shock over the library, where he had discovered thousands of
works believed to have been lost in the Holocaust War.
The names of authors whose works were till now unknown scrolled across the catalog
display, and Ian muttered with frustration when he tried to decide which to examine
first.
"Look at these," Ian had cried. "The discovery of just one of these books would have
been worthy of note, and we've found thousands. It will revolutionize our understanding
of pre-Holocaust literature."
Shelley hung over his shoulder and watched as the names and works flashed across
the screen.
"Who was this Mailer?" she asked.
"Someone obscure, I've read that his works are nothing but worthless mutterings."
"Then if that's the case, with our memory filled to capacity, shouldn't we dump him? I
mean, Richard, Stasz, and Ellen are all howling for memory space."
"Yeah, maybe you're right," Ian replied, and he pushed the erase button to make room
for something of more value.
"What about this Akhmedov? I never heard of him either."
"Good heavens, girl, and you my grad-ass ahh, I mean assistant. I should have you go
back and reread your texts." And it was at that moment that the alarm kicked in.
Stasz quickly hit the override and within minutes they had gathered forward to see
what was to come.
"No beacon functioning on this one," Stasz reported to the assembled crew, "but it's
the biggest I've ever seen. Her mass triggered the alarm. She's only about five hundred
A.U. off our main course, heading for Delta Sag. Should we jump down and check it
out?"
Ian looked around and shrugged his shoulders. "What the hell?" he murmured. And
turning, he went back to the computer board aft to ride out the velocity shifts and the
gut-popping downshift to sublight.
"So that explains the mass," Stasz said. "There're two of them riding together."
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They were on final approach, and the confusing shape of what appeared to be a triple
torus mated to a Bernal sphere had finally, at closer examination, resolved itself into
two distinct and different vessels.
"Shelley, can you get a clear design printout of this?" Ian asked.
Shelley ran the radar imaging through the computer file, and after several minutes of
cross-matching with their records, the probable design and ship's data finally came up
on the screen.
"Ian?"
"Yes?"
"What the hell is Albania?"
"Albania?" He floated over to Shelley's side and peered over her shoulder. He noticed
that there was a faint but pleasant scent to her hair, and for a second his thoughts were
diverted.
"What is it?" Ellen asked, and as he looked across at her Ian realized that she had
noticed his diversion and he felt somewhat flustered.
Albania? Faint memories were stirred of old maps of southeastern Europe. He wasn't
sure, but he had a recollection that they were some crazy nationalist group out of the
Balkans. A number of ethnic groups had founded colonies in that final decade before the
Holocaust, as an attempt to preserve their culture if the war finally came. So this then
must be an ethnic preservation unit. He chuckled softly at the image of the Albanians
greeting him at the door wearing gawdy peasant garb and gyrating to bizarre folk music.
This might be amusing, Ian thought lightly. They must be harmless.
"Ian, I'm getting a printout on the second unit," Shelley said. "It appears to be another
ethnic group, it's a Serbo-Croatian Nationalist Liberation Unit."
Serbo-Croatians? Hell, even he was stumped by that. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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