JК
World Of Ptavvs :: Нивен Ларри
Страница: 118 из 127"
"Hell weare. That message was in code. Lloyd, get the maser pointed at Pluto. We've got to warn the Belters. Smoky, is there a Mayday signal we can use?"
"No need. They'll hear you. It's too late anyway."
"What do you mean?"
"They're going down."
Kzanol walked slowly through a tunnel which gleamed dull white where the light fell. With practice he had learned to stay the right distance behind the disappearing far wall, following his disintegrator beam, so that he walked in a sloppy cylinder six feet in diameter. The wind-roared past him and ceased to be wind; it was flying dust and ice particles, flying in vacuum and low gravity, and it packed the tunnel solidly behind him.
The other suit was two hundred feet beyond the end of the sloping tube.
Kzanol looked up. He turned off the disintegrator and stood, stiffly furious, waiting. They had dared! They were just beyond control range, too far away and moving in fast, but they were decelerating as they closed in. He waited, ready to kill.
Mature consideration stopped him. He needed a ship in which to leave Pluto; his own was shot to heat death. Those above him were single seaters, useless to him, but he knew that other ships were coming. He must not frighten them away.
He would let these ships land.
Lew's singleship hung nose down over the surface of Pluto. He'd set the gyros that way. The ship would be nose down for a long time, perhaps until the gyros wore out. Yet he could see nothing. The planetary surface was hidden beneath a curtain of boiling storm clouds.
He knew that he had passed Cott's Crescent some minutes ago. He had heard the hum of an open intership circuit. Now, coming toward him over the curved horizon, was a storm within a storm: the titanic whirling hurricane he had passed over twice already. Pluto takes months to rotate. Only a monumental flow of air, air newly created, rushing around from the other side of the planet, could have carried enough lateral velocity to build such a sky whirlpool from mere Coriolis effects. Flames flickered in its roiling rim; but the center was a wide circle of calm, clear near-vacuum all the way down to the icy plateau.
Over the radio came the sound of Garner's voice.
"… Please answer at once so we'll know you're all right. There is a real chance that the ET survived the crash, in which case-"
"Now you're telling me, you know-it-all son of a bitch!" Lew couldn't talk. His tongue and his lips were as frozen as the rest of his voluntary muscles.
"Hell weare. That message was in code. Lloyd, get the maser pointed at Pluto. We've got to warn the Belters. Smoky, is there a Mayday signal we can use?"
"No need. They'll hear you. It's too late anyway."
"What do you mean?"
"They're going down."
Kzanol walked slowly through a tunnel which gleamed dull white where the light fell. With practice he had learned to stay the right distance behind the disappearing far wall, following his disintegrator beam, so that he walked in a sloppy cylinder six feet in diameter. The wind-roared past him and ceased to be wind; it was flying dust and ice particles, flying in vacuum and low gravity, and it packed the tunnel solidly behind him.
The other suit was two hundred feet beyond the end of the sloping tube.
Kzanol looked up. He turned off the disintegrator and stood, stiffly furious, waiting. They had dared! They were just beyond control range, too far away and moving in fast, but they were decelerating as they closed in. He waited, ready to kill.
Mature consideration stopped him. He needed a ship in which to leave Pluto; his own was shot to heat death. Those above him were single seaters, useless to him, but he knew that other ships were coming. He must not frighten them away.
He would let these ships land.
Lew's singleship hung nose down over the surface of Pluto. He'd set the gyros that way. The ship would be nose down for a long time, perhaps until the gyros wore out. Yet he could see nothing. The planetary surface was hidden beneath a curtain of boiling storm clouds.
He knew that he had passed Cott's Crescent some minutes ago. He had heard the hum of an open intership circuit. Now, coming toward him over the curved horizon, was a storm within a storm: the titanic whirling hurricane he had passed over twice already. Pluto takes months to rotate. Only a monumental flow of air, air newly created, rushing around from the other side of the planet, could have carried enough lateral velocity to build such a sky whirlpool from mere Coriolis effects. Flames flickered in its roiling rim; but the center was a wide circle of calm, clear near-vacuum all the way down to the icy plateau.
Over the radio came the sound of Garner's voice.
"… Please answer at once so we'll know you're all right. There is a real chance that the ET survived the crash, in which case-"
"Now you're telling me, you know-it-all son of a bitch!" Lew couldn't talk. His tongue and his lips were as frozen as the rest of his voluntary muscles.