The Death of Sleep
- Автор: Маккефри Энн, Най Джоди Линн
- Серия: Planet Pirates #2
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Death of Sleep». Краткое содержание книги:
Her last conscious thoughts were of her daughter, and she hoped that the rescue shuttle wouldn't take too long to answer the Mayday.
All lights on the shuttle except the exterior running lights and beacon went down. Inside, cold cryogenic vapor filled the tiny cabin, swirling around Lunzie's still form…
"We bluff. Flor, send another message to theZaid-Dayan. Tell them that we've got two pirates circling Ambrosia. Tell them to take any shortcuts they can. Force multiple jumps. If they don't hurry, we'll be just a scorch mark and crater on the landscape. We're going to stall the inevitable just as long as we can."
"How?" Lunzie demanded, wishing she felt as confident as Zebara sounded.
"That, Doctor, is what we must figure out. Flor, have you sent that? Good. Now get on the general communicator channel and get the crew back here for a conference.
"I want your most positive thinking on how we can keep those pirates off planet," Zebara began once the crew had assembled in the messroom.
"Those blips couldn't possibly be anything else, could they?" Bringan asked after clearing his throat.
Zebara gave a short bark of laughter. "They haven't answered hails and their profile doesn't match anything in our records. And it's not good neighbourliness they're leaking. Think, my friends. Think hard. How do we stall them?"
"No black box, huh?" asked Vir, a thin human with straight black hair and a bleak expression.
Flor shook her head. "Those would be a long time disconnected." No legitimate ship would put out into space without the black box interface between control systems and engines which transmitted automatic identification signals. To disconnect it disabled the drives. Unscrupulous engineers had been known to jury-rig components, but such a ship would never be allowed in an FSP-sanctioned port.
Zebara smashed his fist into a palm. "Stop denying the problem. Think. We've got to stall them long enough to let theZaid-Dayan reach Ambrosian space."
No one spoke for a long moment. No one even exchanged glances in the tense atmosphere of the wardroom.
"What if we take off? Can't we outrun them?" Vir demanded to Wendell, the pilot.
"Not a chance," Wendell said sadly. "My engines don't have the kick to push us far enough out of their range to make a warp jump. They'd catch us halfway there."
"So we're stuck on this planet while the predators line us up in their sights," Dondara growled, scrubbing his dusty hair with his hands. He had taken only thirty minutes to run the distance from the pools after he'd received Flor's mayday recall. Lunzie was full of admiration for the heavyworlder's stamina.
Scarran cleared his throat. His perpetually red-shot brown eyes made him look choleric or sleepy and he had a naturally mild personality.
"What about a violent disease of some sort? We're all dead and dying of it. Highly contagious. Can't find an antidote," he suggested in a self-deprecating voice.
"No, that wouldn't work," Pollili scoffed, drawing her brows together. "Even assuming they're of a species with enough in common with ours to catch it, they'd blow our ship off the face of the planet to wipe out the contagion and then land where they pleased."
"What about natural disaster?" asked Elessa, collecting nods from Flor and Scarran. "Unstable tectonics? An earthquake! A volcano about to blow? They'd have sacrificed scanning potential to some sort of weaponry."
"Possibly," Pollili drawled. "Even the simplest telemetry systems warn you if you're going to put down on a shifting surface. And live volcanoes show up as hot spots on infrared."
"What about a hostile life-form?" Lunzie asked, and was generally hooted down by the others.
"What, attack ferrets?" Elessa held up the black-furred kittisnake, which curled around her hands, cooing breathily to show its contentment. "If the pirates are after Ambrosia when FSP has scarcely heard of its existence, they already know what's down here, besides us. Sorry, folks." "Hold it a moment," Bringan said, raising a hand. "Lunzie has made a positive suggestion that merits discussion. Lunzie…"
"I had in mind a free bacterium that gets into your breathing apparatus and caulks it up with goo," Lunzie said, warming to her topic. "Five of our officers are down with it already. Nothing, not even breather masks, seems to keep it out. I feel that it's only a matter of time before they die of oxygen deprivation. The organism didn't appear in our initial reports because it's inert, sluggish during the winter months. It dies off in the cold. Now that the climate's warmed up for summer, the bug reproduces like mad. We're all infected. I've just discovered that it's gotten into the ventilation system, housed in the filters. I doubt we'd ever be able to lift off again, with the ship's air-recycling system fouled. I'm putting Ambrosia on indefinite quarantine. Only moral, ethical action possible to a medic or any professionality. Contact between ships is likely to doom them both. In fact, it's my professional opinion that theARCT-10 is in real danger since Zebara and Wendell were on board to report to Admin. Their lungs were already contaminated and the air they exhaled from their lungs would now be in theARCT 's air-recirculation system. Lungs are always warm - until the host is dead."
"What? What are you talking about?" demanded Vir, paling.
"What's this bacterium?" Elessa demanded. "I never observed one here and I prepared all the initial slides!"
"It's called Pseudococcus pneumonosis." Lunzie smiled slyly. She was rather pleased with the astonished reaction to her little fable. "I've just discovered it, you see. A nicely non-existent but highly contagious condition, inevitably and painfully fatal. It might just stall them. It will certainly make them pause a while. If we can be convincing enough." Then she chuckled. "If we get out of this alive, someone better check with the oldARCT and see just who scrambled to the infirmary, requiring treatment for a fatal lung disease."
Zebara and Bringan chortled and, when the rest of the crew realised she'd been acting out a scenario, they gave Lunzie a round of applause. Laughter eased the tension and indicated renewed hope.
"That just might work," Bringan agreed after several moments of hard thinking. He gave Lunzie a warm smile. "Would we have trouble with them understanding medical lingo?"
Lunzie shrugged. "If I could fool you for a few minutes, I maybe can fool them. You see, Bringan's only a xeno-medic. He diagnosed it as vacation fever: personnel pretending to be sick so they could lounge in the sun. Once we got back here, with me, a human-medically trained person, I began to suspect a serious medical problem. By then it was too late to contain the bacterium. It was widespread. And, for all I know, loose on theARCT-10 as well.
"Sorry about this, folks, but I'll make it extremely personaclass="underline" heavyworlders get it worst." She warded off the violent protests until Zebara bellowed for silence.
"She's got a valid reason to pick on us."
"I said I was sorry, heavyworlders. I'm not disparaging you but it's a fact, piracy has attracted many heavyworlders. Look, I'm not starting an argument…"
"And I'm ending it," Zebara said, showing his shark teeth. The muttering subsided immediately. "Lunzie's reasoning is sound. We take the lumps."
"How do you know so much about the planet pirates?" Dondara wanted to know, his eyes narrowed and unfriendly.
"Not my choice, but I do. Sorry about this."
"I'll forgive you if it works," Dondara said, but he gave her a wry twist of a smile.
"I think she's come up with the best chance we've got," the xenobiologist said approvingly. "Unless someone has thought up a better one just recently? Who delivers this deathless message to the pirates?" He looked at Zebara.
"I think I'd better," Zebara replied. "Not to decry Lunzie's dramatic abilities, but because the report of a heavyweight will be more acceptable to them than anything a lightweight could say."
"I hate such an expedient." With a fierce expression, Dondara exploded to his feet. "Do we have to compound the insult to all honourable heavyworlders who abhor the practice of piracy?"