The ship’s PIC (pilot in command) had been unable to come to his senses after the lengthy sleep, and GAS had to dispose of him. As a result GAS had been left without a professional pilot for the return journey, as well as to maneuver around the planet Hopus, and here the pilot Peter would come in really handy.

“Hold on for a little while, my boy. For now we need this man,” GAS placated Arcad. “As soon as we can do without him, I’ll push him into the airlock chamber, all right?”

“Well, all right,” agreed Arcad and the conflict was resolved.

Peter was an experienced pilot, and after he had heard that the PIC perished, he realized that he was indispensable for GAS to approach and maneuver the ship around the planet Hopus. That was why he began acting brazenly and aggressively, unlike the other survivors. Soon after coming to, Peter started paying visits to the cabin where the survived girls lived, just four out of twelve remaining. He would pick up the most attractive girl or the first one available (depending on his mood) and take her back to his cabin to have sex. None of the girls would decline his invitations for several reasons. Firstly, Peter was a tall and handsome young man, and, second, there was more than enough food in his cabin – meal packs were being rationed for cabins of four, and he was all alone in his quarters after his three roommates had died. The girls were happy to get their hands on the extra food, as GAS was starving them, thinking of them as useless eaters. Peter perfectly understood that after returning to Earth he would be thrown back to the special barracks under any pretext, and was secretly hoping to stay on the planet Hopus if such an opportunity would arise, with one of the girls who would accept his offer. And he was trying to choose the best one of the four.

Following GAS’ orders, Peter spent every day in the ship’s cockpit, checking the operations of all systems. He was quite savvy in electronics, having a background in engineering and machine programming. And because the ship had been assembled in a hurry and had been flown in automated mode twice as long as had been planned, many manual control units just didn’t respond to his commands – red lights kept turning on to report a problem. Peter was taking them apart, pinging back and forth, pinpointing the damaged parts and faulty electronic boards, and replacing them with the new ones – luckily, spare microchips, diodes, and capacitors were all in plentiful supply on the ship.

The designers and contractors foresaw that the huge rush the spaceship was being built in, breakdowns during the flight would be unavoidable, and prudently loaded the ship with several boxes of all kinds of parts.

Peter had to work quickly as the ship was finishing its slowdown – very soon, when Hopus’ orbit was reached, he was supposed to switch to manual control. Sometimes he even was sleeping in the cockpit, leaving it only to have a bite in his cabin. It was during those routine trips through the hallway between the two spaces when he ran into the little boss. His fellow crew members had told him about some child, who appeared out of nowhere and was running back and forth, poking his nose into everything and trying to give orders on GAS’ behalf. But Peter was ignoring what others were saying, assuming that it was some new advanced robotic assistant of GAS, and after colliding with the buster in the hallway immediately forgot about him.

Текст предоставлен ООО «Литрес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на Литрес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.