"Wil McCarthy - Boundary Condition" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCarty Sarah)

glue for the rest of his life. Never a moment alone.

"Buuut ... just as quickly he realizes he's the boss here. These guards have to do what he says. So he
says to the one who's driving, he says, 'Slide over. I'm taking the wheel.' And what can the guy do? He
slides over, and Pope Dave starts driving."

"Uh-huh," said Tomohiro, crossing his arms like this was already the worst joke he'd ever heard. He was
slowly tilting, too, which in zero gravity was a subtle way of dissing someone. If you were interested, you
didn't drift; you kept yourself aligned with the person you were listening to.

But Jim pressed on. "So anyway, it's not built like a normal car, and he's not used to the controls. He's
wandering in and out of his lane, can't hold a constant speed. Pretty soon the cops pull him over, so he
rolls down the window like a good citizen and hands over his driver's license. And the one cop says to
the other cop, 'Holy shit, we've got to let this guy go. He's really important.'"

"'What makes you say that?' says the other cop. He's not looking, right? He's filling out paperwork. And
the first cop turns to him and says, 'I don't know who he is, but he's got Pope Dave for a fucking
chauffeur!'"

Tomo processed that for a few seconds, then spent another few trying not to laugh. But it was a good
joke, and it broke out a decent chuckle.

"See?" said Jiminy. "That's a joke. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to find my headset in time for dock
ops."

"Oh. You should hurry," Tomo said. "We don't really have that long."

Jim slid open the fanfold of his cabin, which was about the size of three coffins stacked vertically. (How
much space did one person really need? Especially in microgravity?) He drifted to the back and
commenced rummaging, finally locating his headset in the webbing of his top desk drawer. Safety and
command protocols aside, he didn't normally wear the thing indoors. It chafed and squeezed, and after
enough hours it would turn his whole ear red. This one was dead, of course — he was always forgetting
to turn it off — so he swapped in the battery waiting fresh on the charger, then slid the whole thing down
over his head and right ear, carefully adjusting the microphone to the proper angle and distance from his
mouth. The headsets had literally come from Radio Shack, and were damned flaky about things like that.

Finally he switched it on, and was greeted by the chatter of Bob Cass and Lisa Goho in the control
cupola at the "top" of the Hab, i.e., the part facing away from Earth. Opposite the docking module, so
they could guide the shuttle in with minimal risk of being personally crushed by it. Bob was the station
commander, Lisa was the X.O., and both of them were pilots. Indeed, they would be flying that same
shuttle back to Earth tomorrow afternoon.

"Aaah, closing rate 3.6 meters per second," Lisa informed the channel flatly. "Recommend another
deceleration toot."

"Aaah, roger that," said an unfamiliar voice — the shuttle's own current pilot. "Be advised, we are still
lining up the final approach. Expect a burn in approximately fifteen seconds."

It went on like that for some time. The "Aaah" was to trigger the mics in voice-activated mode. Without it
they would step on the first second or two of actual speech, with sometimes-calamitous results. It was an