"Richard Hatch - Battlestar Galactica 5 - Paradis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hatch Richard)

my Viper into a cloud, let it be composed of water vapor in the
atmosphere of a livable planet."

Sometimes prayers were answered.

The thin strands of wispy cloud racing by the Viper were all about life
as opposed to the blank negation of the Ur cloud. Apollo liked to be in a
thick soup of life. The current reports of the scientists were tantalizing, to
say the least.

Salik reported evidence of a humanoid life form that was in a primitive
stage. In other words, they didn't have high-tech. It was too soon to
estimate population size or draw any conclusions on how widely
distributed the humanoids were over the planet.

The Colonials could be here for some considerable time, given the
disastrous condition of the fleet and all the work that needed doing. Apollo
hoped they could keep culture clash to a minimum.

But at this very moment, he didn't want to think about that. For a few
centari he didn't want to think about the mission, even though he had a
specific destination he'd kept from the other Viper pilots.

For a few blessed moments he wanted nothing but to pretend that he
was a tourist. When he was in resonance with his inner light he had no
desire to conquer new worlds. He only wanted to see them.

So Apollo descended from the stratosphere into the lower clouds. They
formed an ethereal landscape with snowy cliffs rising out of a vast
continent that wasn't there. The red sun's light gave them a burnished
quality. For one mad micron he felt that he could step out of his Viper and
walk on them.

He didn't have to. The promise of real continents lay below. He would
go down and gaze upon solid ground, mindful that on alien worlds
appearances could be as misleading as any cloudscape.

Breaking through the lower cloud banks, the first thing he noticed was
a riot of color. Then his warrior training zeroed in on what seemed to be
flashes off a metal surface—but closer scrutiny revealed smooth boulders
reflecting the sunlight.

Descending lower, he had a much better view of the forest. A river also
reflected sunlight. The sight of fresh water was as refreshing as if he'd just
drunk from a bubbling fountain. There were trees and grasses. There were
flying animals that were the first cousins of birds and flowering plants.
The river rolled on underneath him, a blue ribbon leading into a deep
ravine.

He did not linger over the valley but leveled off and flew on, traversing a