"Blish, James - Surface Tension" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blish James)

dared to adapt to it. What are the pantropes going to do with
our recalcitrant carcassesprovide built-in waterwings?"
"No," Chatvieux said calmly. "You and I and all the rest
of us are going to die, Paul. Pantropic techniques don't work
on the body; that was fixed for you for life when you were
conceived. To attempt to rebuild it for you would only maim
you. The pantropes affect only the genes, the inheritance-
carrying factors. We can't give you built-in waterwings, any
more than we can give you a new set of brains. I think we'll
be able to populate this world with men, but we won't live to
see it."
The pilot thought about it, a lump of cold blubber collect-
, ing gradually in his stomach. "How long do you give us?" he
said at last.
"Who knows? A month, perhaps."
The bulkhead leading to the wrecked section of the ship
was pushed back, admitting salt, muggy air, heavy with carbon
dioxide. Philip Strasvogel, the communications officer, came
in, tracking mud. Like la Ventura, he was now a man without
a function, and it appeared to bother him. He was not well
equipped for introspection, and with his ultraphone totally
smashed, unresponsive to his perpetually darting hands, he
had been thrown back into his own mind, whose resources
were few. Only the tasks Chatvieux had set him to had pre-
vented him from setting like a gelling colloid into a perma-
nent state of the sulks.
He 'unbuckled from around his waist a canvas belt, into
the loops of which plastic vials were stuffed like cartridges.
"More samples. Doc," he said. "All alikewater, very wet.
I have some quicksand in one boot, too. Find anything?"
"A good deal, Phil. Thanks. Are the others around?"
Strasvogel poked his head out and hallooed. Other voices
rang out over the mudflats. Minutes later, the rest of the sur-
vivors of the crash were crowding into the pantrope deck:
Saltonstall, Chatvieux' senior assistant, a perpetually sanguine,
perpetually youthful technician willing to try anything once,
including dying; Eunice Wagner, behind whose placid face
rested the brains of the expedition's only remaining ecologist;
Eleftherios Venezuelos, the always-silent delegate from the
Colonization Council; and Joan Heath, a midshipman whose
duties, like la Ventura's and Phil's, were now without mean-
ing, but whose bright head and tall, deceptively indolent
body shone to the pilot's eyes brighter than Tau Ceti
brighter, since the crash, even than the home sun.
Five men and two womento colonize a planet on which
"standing room" meant treading water.
They came in quietly and found seats or resting places on
the deck, on the edges of tables, in corners. Joan Heath went
to stand beside la Ventura. They did not look at each other,
but the warmth of her shoulder beside his was all that he