"Harry Harrison - One Step From Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

FOOD the painted letters on it read. Fine. He kicked it rolling to one side and jumped for the next one.

The demand regulator on his back was clicking regularly, feeding him an almost steady flow of pure
oxygen, and his head was swimming with fatigue. The ground all about was littered with containers,
tubes, and bundles of all lengths, but with the same diameter. Otto tapped him on the shoulder and he
dropped the case he was dragging.

"I passed out, I'm sorry. Is anything — "

"Shut up and grab that tube that's jamming up in front of the screen."

One, two more, then Ben looked on and blinked as a shining dural plate fell from the screen and
clattered to the ground. He bent over and saw that someone had lettered on it with red grease pencil.

"SUGGEST YOU CHECK OXYGEN TANK LEVEL. ERECT SHELTER. CHANGE TANKS."

"Someone is thinking now," Ben muttered and jerked his thumb at the tank on his back. "What does it
read?"

"Just a quarter left."

"They're right. Erecting the shelter gets priority."

Otto rooted about among the canisters while Ben stretched out the long and unwieldy fabric sausage The
fastenings snapped open easily and he spread it out flat just as he had done in training. Only during
training he had not hovered on the edge of exhaustion, fighting the heavy shelter material with clumsy
gloves. It was finally done and he looked up to see Otto fastening a tank to an inlet tube with the quick
fastening attachment.

"What the hell do you think you are doing?" Ben said, the words rasping in his dry throat. He hit Otto on
the shoulder, knocking him sprawling.

Otto just lay there, wide-eyed and silent, as though he thought Ben had gone mad. Shaking with anger
Ben pointed to the connection.

"Use your eyes. Stay alert. Or you will kill us both. You were attaching a red pipe to a green tank."

"I'm sorry ... I didn't notice — "

"Of course you didn't, you stupid slob. But youhave to here. Red is oxygen, what we breathe and what
inflates the shelter. Green is the insulating gas that goes into the double wall. Not poisonous, but just as
deadly because we can't breathe it."

Ben made the connections himself and would not let Otto come near, even threatening him with the
wrench when he tried to. One tank of oxygen blew the shelter up to a pudding-shaped mound. The
second erected it to a firm dome and the pressure valve on the inlet sealed shut automatically. Ben knew