Death Sentence by Roger MacBride Allen Read Free Book Online

reentry system and landing gear into the same hull as a stardrive and a long-duration life-support system meant a lot of design compromises, a lot of hardware that was expected to do two or three things reasonably well, instead of doing one job very well.
    "This bucket doesn't look much bigger than the old Orient Express --back before we got her blown up," said Jamie. "And she was just a surface-to-orbit job. This thing is a starship ?"
    "She's a starship," Hannah confirmed, "and she's exactly the same size as the poor old Express . They're both modifications from the same hull design."
    "Makes me appreciate the Captain Hastings ," Jamie replied.
    "You've been in the lap of luxury. Back before you and I partnered together, I practically lived in these tubs." The Hastings had been their star-to-star transport on a number of missions, and had carried the ill-fated and since-replaced Orient Express as a landing craft. Half of Hannah's career had been spent on riding ships like the Adler to and from missions--or at least it seemed that way to her. It was a bit of a jolt to realize that Jamie had never been aboard one before. He had been partnered with Hannah from his first day in the Bullpen, and therefore hadn't spent any time at all on single-ships.
    The Adler was basically a rounded-off cone, and her interior reflected that. The lower deck, where they were standing, was a circle about five meters across, with much of the perimeter space taken up by the air lock, a small and uncomfortable refresher compartment with toilet and washing facilities, and various engineering and access panels. There was a fold-down bed, and a pull-down table, and a fold-out chair--but not room to have all three of them out at once. The galley was another series of pull-out modules, as was the miniature station intended for in-field forensic work. There was barely any room left for personal items or specialty equipment. Living in a Sherlock -class ship was an adventure in constantly stowing and unstowing gear. It was going to be doubly fun with two of them aboard, plus the luggage packed with fancy-dress clothes they had to to take along.
    Hannah looked up toward the upper deck and the nose hatch. Of course, calling it an upper deck was a massive overstatement. It was all of three and a half meters above the level of the lower deck. At that level, the conical ship's diameter had narrowed to about three meters wide, at a generous estimate. The upper deck was really nothing more than a section of open steel-mesh flooring that took up only about half of the ship's interior diameter, with the rest left open to serve as a passageway between the nose hatch and the lower deck. Bolted to the steel-mesh floor was an acceleration chair that faced the ship's less-than-sophisticated control panel and three small viewports. The pilot's chair could be swiveled about to put the pilot's back to the deckplates so she was looking toward the ship's forward end for close-in maneuvering and docking with the nose hatch. There was a rope ladder rigged from the nose hatch down to the lower deck of the Adler . The steps of the ladder were heavy-duty plastic, and the ladder ropes ended in metal rings that slipped into snap-shut stanchions on the deck. The topside end of the ladder was secured the same way--and there was another set of snap-shuts that held the ladder in place at the level of the upper deck.
    Hannah slung the strap of her duffel bag over her shoulder and started the climb up the ladder toward the nose hatch, and the Sholto . Jamie followed.
    She paused at the upper deck, shifting to one side of the ladder to let Jamie come up alongside her. They both stared at the pilot's acceleration chair for a moment.
    "Yeah," said Gunther, answering the unasked question. "That's where we found him. At his station, staring out at the stars. We, ah, had to remove and replace the pilot's chair. It wasn't in very good shape, after, ah, Special Agent Wilcox had been in it for all