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."The count is seven to one, but you’re the one, John."Dumping the eggs onto a plate, Sandoz carried it to the table and sat with his back to the galley.John followed him, lips compressed, plunking the mug of orange juice down belligerently and sitting across the table from him.Emilio ate under his friend’s withering glare for a time before pushing his plate aside."Look.John.Face facts," he advised finally."No matter what you think of him or his motives, Danny Iron Horse has already staked his soul on this mission, yes?" He stared, level-eyed, until John nodded reluctantly."Joseba has his own reasons for wanting to go on to Rakhat, regardless of anyone else’s.Sean—I don’t understand Sean, but he seems to think that cynicism about human nature is an adequate response to sin.He won’t take a stand."John’s eyes hadn’t dropped, but it was beginning to sink in."As for Nico," Emilio said, "don’t underestimate him.He is not as dim as he looks, and he has been thoroughly inculcated with the notion of loyalty to his padrone.Attack Carlo, and you will have Nico to deal with, and I warn you: he is very good at his job." Emilio shrugged."But let’s say Sean stood out of this, and you could co-opt Danny and Joseba, and overcome Carlo and Nico somehow.You’d still need Fat Frans to pilot the ship back to Earth—""Right, and Frans is a shameless mercenary! So we buy him off! And anyway, he thinks Carlo is crazy—""Frans has a wonderful gift for colorful exaggeration." Emilio sat up and rested his arms on the table."John, Carlo is cold and unscrupulous and completely selfish, but he is a long way from crazy.Even if he were barking mad, I wouldn’t count on Frans’s cooperation with your plan, such as it is." John bristled, but Emilio continued, "The Camorra has a long reach and a longer memory.Frans would be running a great risk to buck Carlo—""An excellent analysis, Sandoz!" cried Carlo as he walked into the room."Positively Machiavellian.Really, Candotti," Carlo said dryly when John jumped at the sound of his voice, "secrecy is the first principle of conspiracy! The commons room is hardly the place for this sort of thing." He turned his merry gray eyes from John’s now roseate face to Sandoz’s, lined and still."And you, Sandoz? Have you no wish to return to Gina and my daughter?""What I wish is irrelevant.The fact is, I was a part of their lives for only a few months." John gasped, and Emilio turned to him."Years are passing at home, John.Even if we were to come about and return now, I could hardly expect to drop back in on them as though I’d been away on a business trip."John looked stricken, but Carlo beamed."I may assume then that you have reached a decision regarding my proposals—"They would remember later that the impact sounded like a rifle shot.There was a single unresonant bang, followed by an instant of utter silence in total darkness, and then the shouts and cries throughout the ship of men tumbling blindly when the engines cut out and they lost the gravity provided by acceleration.The emergency lighting came on almost immediately, but with restored vision came the screaming of klaxons signaling a hull breach and then the high-pitched whine of compartment doors rolling shut and locking themselves down, endeavoring with mechanical efficiency to isolate regions of atmospheric pressure loss.A moment later, the spin imparted by the collision took over and every loose object in the ship was now flung away from the ship’s center of mass.John was thrown into the table’s edge, the breath driven from his lungs.Emilio, knocked sideways when the ship lurched, was now pinned against a bulkhead, the outline of an air intake square against his back.Ears ringing from the blow when his head hit the wall, he watched the Wolverton tube with wide-eyed fascination, as plants and soilmix ripped loose and whirled, propelled by a tornado within the transparent cylinder that had been a vertical garden moments before."That’s the axis.in the tube!" Carlo yelled.He was spread-eagled, back against the bulkhead opposite Sandoz.The sensation was like that of an amusement park ride that had thrilled him when he was a child—a large padded cylinder that spun faster and faster until centrifugal force held people against the walls and the floor dropped out from under them.It was hard to breathe against a force that wanted to flatten him, so he kept his phrases short but calm."Sandoz, there is a.red control button.to your left—.Yes.Be so kind [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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