"Gordon R. Dickson - The Far Call 2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

"I'm in reference grid cube JN 43721, Kennedy," said Tad.
"Copy. Grid cube JN 43721. How's your radar, Phoenix One?" Tad looked at the radar screen
with its sweeping line of light and the intersecting blip in the upper right quadrant.
"Fine," said Tad. "Phoenix Two looks to be not more than sixteen kilometers off."
"Thanks, Phoenix One. That checks with our data. Stand by for plane, bearing and distance."
 "Standing by," said Tad.
While he waited, Bap and Anoshi came back up to the Control Deck.
"Say again?" Tad asked, for the sound of their return had obscured some of the figures Mission
Control had just begun to give him.
Mission Control repeated itself, giving Tad first the angle to the longitudinal axis of Phoenix One of
the plane which enclosed both spacecraft, then the bearing and distance of Phoenix Two from Phoenix
One within that plane. Tad reached for the control buttons of the cold gas steering jets used to maneuver
his ship. A docking maneuver between the two vessels in space was too chancy to he trusted to any
computer.
"All right, Mission Control, I copy," he said. "Phoenix One to Phoenix Two, if you are holding
stationary, I will approach for docking."
"Holding stationary, Phoenix One," came back the calm voice of Fedya. "Come ahead."
Tad's fingers descended on the controls of the steering thrusters. Out beyond the glass viewing port
to his right, the little reflection of Phoenix Two was lost among the lights of uncounted stars. In the
ceaseless glare of the Sun, through the airless distance between them, six hundred and seventy-five
thousand pounds of Phoenix One tilted, turned, and drifted toward the six hundred and seventy-five
thousand pounds of Phoenix Two under the necessity of coming together with a touch so light that it
would not have dimpled the bumper of a four-thousand-pound vehicle back on Earth's surface.

VI

Phoenix Two, seen from Phoenix One, as Phoenix One approached her, was at first only a slightly
brighter point of light among the surrounding stars for some minutes, then only a glare-spot for some time
more. Not until Phoenix One was finally quite close did she appear to change suddenly from a
light-reflection to a spacecraft. Actually, it was as only half of a spacecraft that she appeared in the
forward view screen; because, lying nearly bow-on to the approaching Phoenix One, as she now was,
her other half was swallowed up in the perfect darkness, that was shadow in airless space, so that she
looked as if she had been divided longitudinally by an enormous bandsaw.
The motions of Tad's fingers on the controls of the steering thrusters were practiced, familiar ones.
Still he felt the prickle of sweat on his face and at the back of his 'neck. He was as conscious of the
whole two hundred and seventy feet of craft about him as a man might be of his own car while
maneuvering it into a parking place.
He approached Phoenix Two slowly, bow to bow, the great bell-shaped ends of the forward
sections, the space probes and their individual MEMs in airless readiness, now creeping toward each
other like blind leviathans about to touch in greeting. Beyond the circular metal lip of each of those ends
were six feet of the light metal scaffolding enclosing half of the zero-G lab pod and the cryotex tube
leading back into the D Deck of each ship. The two scaffoldings must take the impact of meeting; and
also they must interlock to hold the two ships together. It would be upon their joined structure that the
strain would come when the two ships were rotated around their common central point, where the
completed pod would sit, to provide a substitute gravity for the men aboard both crafts.
Twelve meters from dock-point," Tad said aloud for the benefit of Mission Control, "ten meters . . .
nine . . . eight . . ."
Phoenix Two seemed to loom above the viewers of the forward screen, as if she was falling upon
her sister ship.
". . . three meters . . . two," said Tad, "one . . . docked!