"Alan Dean Foster - Transformers - Ghosts of Yesterday" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

Besides, there were precedents for this kind of mission. Columbus, for example. Tell the queen and king
one thing and when they're no longer looking over your shoulder, shift your responsibility to your crew.

Rotating his seat, he scrutinized the carefully picked team. Like him, every one of them was a volunteer.
Like him, they had read and signed the pertinent waivers. Each of them knew the deal, knew what they
were getting into (as much as anyone could know). All were aware of the risks the mission entailed.
Thrown together in haste and compelled to work and study overtime, they had melded into an efficient
team during the simulations. If getting back to Earth was a long shot, well, so was just getting successfully
off the planet. And they had done that. He thought of Columbus again. That was another long shot that
had panned out.

Despite making no attempt to conceal the risks, there had been no shortage of applicants. Life was short,
and the number of highly trained specialists ready to give up TV and movies, dull food and duller
conversation, for a chance to push the boundaries of human knowledge was extensive. As the first one to
be officially assigned to the project, Walker was not surprised. He was one of them.

The voice of Mission Control was already starting to show signs of breaking up. Static crackled as those
on the ground manipulated their instrumentation in order to maintain contact. "Sounds good, Ghost One.
Everything looks fine from here, too. Stand by."

The smooth voice that spoke up softly behind Walker was full of jaunty resignation. "You do know
there's a good chance we're all going to die out here, right?"

Walker turned around and narrowed his gaze as he glared at Craig Clarkson. "Do you mind?" he
snapped. "You prepared for this just like the rest of us. It's a little late for second thoughts, and if now
you're feeling a morbid turn of mind, do the rest of us a favor and keep it to yourself." He paused briefly
for emphasis. "You can feel however you like as long as you do your job. Just keep it between your
ears."

The systems engineer looked properly abashed. "I'm sorry, Captain." Clarkson mustered a wan smile.
"Guess I'm more nervous than I thought I'd be. You think about how you're going to react, you talk to
the psych boys about it, but there's really no way to prepare. Not for something nobody's done before or
might ever do again. Being first is one thing. Getting yourself ready to be the last is something else."
Looking past Walker, he stared out at the nothingness that made up the view out the foreport. "Making it
backit's all theoretical. Not like Apollo, where the paradigms are known. This trip is based on a bunch
of advanced math and new physics that hold up okay on paper but might not do so in reality."

"That's what we're here to find out." Walker did his best to project confidence. "Once againeveryone
was apprised of the risks before they signed on for this mission. As systems engineer you ought to be
more familiar with them than any of us." He mustered a smile. "It's all going to work, just like the theorists
laid it out before they started design on the Ghost. It's going to workand we're going to make it back."

"I am delighted to hear that you think so." Clarkson paused. "No spacecraft has ever been tested under
the kinds of conditions that we're going to be subjected to on this mission. There's no way to simulate
them. A wind tunnel is one thing, interplanetary space another. I'll do my best to keep my opinions to
myself, but forgive me if I'm a little skeptical."

Walker looked past him, peering around the cabin and meeting the expectant stares of every member of
the crew. The only one who ignored him was the second-in-command, Jacob Thompson. A damn fine
pilot, as the Academy would say. At the moment he was concentrating on his station's readouts and