Nimisha's Ship
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Nimisha's Ship». Краткое содержание книги:
When Nimisha takes an experimental ship on a solo test flight, something goes horribly awry, marooning her light-years from home on a planet as deadly as it is beautiful. Now the ruthless members of a rival branch of the Rondymense family are given the chance they've been waiting for: to reclaim the Ship Yards by any means necessary.
Only Nimisha's ingenious child, Cuiva, stands in their way. But for how long? For just when her daughter needs her most, Nimisha is in a precarious situation herself--and unable to help. But Nimisha has never given up in her life--and she's not about to start now . . .
Time after time, she had to shake her head at the clumsiness of design in the spaceship, the heaviness of the building materials.
"I shouldn't criticise. FSP didn't even have petralloy until two centuries ago," she remarked. "Easy for me to find their design attempts awkward and inefficient. They got this far with what they had. Give them credit."
"Most creditable," Helm agreed.
"Definitely first wave of the Diaspora," Doc said, having finished the analyses.
"Is this ship among the eighteen cited?" Nimisha asked.
"No, ma'am."
She checked all storage areas and found them empty. And dusty. An orderly withdrawal from the ship. But where to? She returned, striding in her own footprints in the dust, wondering if this would add to the mystery of the ship for future explorers. The whimsy made her grin.
She was glad to be outside in the fresher air. She closed the outer air lock to preserve what power remained. She might want to come back and investigate. There were other metallic anomalies to be examined. If there were actually four ships already marooned on this planet, had the groups joined forces? But if they had joined up, why had they not made use of even such basic requirements as fire, for heating, cooking, and lighting? And built shelters of some description? Or used caves? A rudimentary necessity, or at least a comfort. She had fireplaces in rooms that were heated by cheap and non-polluting substances. She'd even had one at the Yard in her private office for those late night sessions with her subordinates. And tete-a-tetes with Caleb. Oh, dear, better not think of him, she thought in dismay.
She prowled around the rusting ship and found the little graveyard, sited in the churned up soil of the landing, above and to one side of the ship's resting place. Nine metal shafts were etched with the names of the dead: three women and six men. So it had been a mixed crew. The dates were four hundred years ago.
How many generations would that be? Nimisha wondered. If there had been any.
"What was the last registered disappearance that might have been a wormhole eating a ship, Helm?"
"Say again, ma'am?"
Helm liked his commands and queries crisp and uncluttered by personal opinion.
"What is the date the last ship disappeared?"
"Sixteen years ago, ma'am."
Well, that was much better than four hundred years, she thought, firmly banishing the sinking feeling of utter despair. She'd already slept away one of that sum.
"Is there any significant interval between disappearances?"
There was a definite pause as Helm worked on the answer. "A regular pattern cannot be established by the disappearances of ships."
"That could be accounted for," Doc put in, "by the fact that the disappearances themselves took time to be registered."
Even sixteen years-and then the problem of catching the wormhole as it opened at this end. But she'd miss so much of Cuiva… her darling daughter… She gave herself an admonitory shake.
"I've seen all I need to here," she told her ship. "I'm coming back aboard. Helm, please lay in a course for the second anomaly. We'll fly at a low enough altitude to see if we can spot any abandoned settlement these people may have built."
The second blip proved to be the Poolbeg FSPS 9K66E. It had landed circumspectly near a small stream. It, too, showed that it had had a rough passage through the wormhole, with gashes that in one place had damaged the hull integrity.
"She'd have had ten as crew, from the type she is," Nimisha said. "Any word on her?"
"She is listed as lost in space, ma'am, sixteen years ago."
"We know that. What other information have we on the Poolbeg'? Can you get a response from the ship?"
"I have already been calling and received no answer. I am accessing the comunit. Shall I display the result?"
"Just the last entry now, please, Helm."
On her screen was the entry, dated fourteen standard years before.
This is Lieutenant Commander Jonagren Svangel, acting captain of the Poolbeg. As we have sustained damage to our drive and cannot make the repairs required, we have voted to leave the ship to explore our immediate surroundings in the shuttle. We hope to make a base camp in the foothills… a map was inserted, showing the projected goal… and live off the land. Our botanist says there are enough nontoxic edibles to supply us with a fair diet and we have plenty of additives to supplement what we can gather or hunt. Some of the indigenous animals are ferocious, but they can be avoided. We will try to get back and update this log at regular intervals.
"And didn't, poor wretches," Nimisha murmured.
"Shall I spool back, ma'am?"
"No, but copy to our files and for the material we're storing in the beacon."
"Did you intend a physical examination of the ship or its environs?" Helm asked.
"Yes, and break out sidearms for me. I want something that's powerful enough to stop 'ferocious indigenous animals' in their tracks. Obviously the captain of the Poolbeg met with a disaster," Nimisha said.
"How do you construe that?" Doc asked.
"Because an acting captain is making the entry," Nimisha said curtly, on her way to the airlock where she donned the heaviest of her coveralls and attached the repeller harness. "Besides which I can see two graves from here. They were down to eight crew when they left the Poolbeg." She slid the stunner on to its belt hook and completed her exit apparel with a full-face helmet that had a neck protector. She wouldn't be able to turn her head as easily, but the protection might prove a wise precaution.
She paused briefly by the grave sites, pointing the recorder at the markers. Then she stood at attention for a moment, hand on her heart to salute the Service dead. They had died on the same day, two weeks before Svangel's final log entry. She wondered where the others had met their ends, since no one had returned to the Poolbeg to make updates. She detoured slightly to get a sample of the water. The shallow stream burbled down a rocky channel. Winter runoff, if this were the spring of Erehwon's year? The water was cold and clear in the sample tube.
The Poolbeg had been left as shipshape and neat as the older vessel. It had not been stripped of quite as many of its fittings, nor had all the supplies been taken with the marooned. Sixteen years would reduce the supplies the Fiver carried to crumbs. And the Poolbeg was new enough that whatever it had dispensed by way of comestibles could be used by the Fiver's catering unit. However, she could come back when she needed more, if she couldn't find local substitutes.
In fact, since they hadn't taken the small captain's gig, she decided she'd use that for an aerial reconnaissance of their proposed base campsite. And so she informed Helm.
"It's got full power. Why waste mine when this is available?" she said in an unarguable reply to Helm's polite but negative response to her idea.