"Larry Niven - Building Harlequin's Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

Selene was still a touch unstable; it shivered twice with small quakes in the hours they were there. Ali
came and stood beside him. "I like the silence-I like being away from that damned constant data flow. It
feels more human here."

Gabriel held her, not answering, just feeling the soft touch of her dark head in the hollow of his shoulder.
He felt lost without the data, regardless of how ecstatic he was to be on Selene. On Selene!

"Someday," he said, "Selene will be information rich like the ship. We'll enhance the flows some here
before we return-I'll need it to monitor the next steps."

She glared at him, a touch distant suddenly. "Be careful-you'll need too much technology. Let's keep
Selene simple."

Her face was bathed in Apollo's light, her skin duskier than he remembered from the ship. They pulled
their masks aside, and he gave her the first kiss on Selene. It was quick. Selene had just barely more
oxygen, right now, than the top of Everest. It needed life to make a living atmosphere.

Thousands of years of shifts had taught them all to take intimacy where they found it, to appreciate it, and
consider it friendship.

They flew happily back up to John Glenn. Gabriel returned with Wayne, and while Gabriel and Wayne
walked Selene's surface, Ali packed up cultures and genetic material so they could start seeding the
regolith, eventually covering part of Selene with bacteria to begin the process of making soil.

When they warmed next, all of the bacteria were dead. So they stayed awake and watched the next
attempt, killing time designing a huge tent. They would control the atmosphere inside the tent, and use it
to build greenhouses and homes; a little city. The tent stood up well to the little earthquakes that came
along. They dubbed the new town Aldrin, and stayed there from time to time.

It took four tries-twenty years-to get healthy cyanobacteria mats spread across the ground near Aldrin
and have something like soil. Now it was time to wake the High Council.

Gabriel spent hours with each of them, running low on sleep, talking excitedly. He had Astronaut play
videos for the captain; lost moons dancing into each other. Gabriel watched the captain's wrinkled face
closely, saw how his deep-ocean-blue eyes tracked the flow of moons and proto-comets.

Captain John Hunter had stayed awake during the long crippled flight that took them to Gliese 876 after
they nearly burned up in the interstellar wind. That trip was so long that no amount of post-ice
rejuvenation treatments had removed the spots and lines and dark circles that transformed his face.
Centuries of pain were etched in odd bends of his fingers and toes, in the hunch in his back, the folds
over his eyes. But intelligence still lived in his eyes. If anything, the ravages his choices had created in his
body made his will stronger. It mattered to Gabriel that John Hunter see the dream he'd helped design
come alive.

It went well, except for the astonishing rapidity with which Council returned to the cryo-tanks. They
wanted an easier world to oversee.

Once, Gabriel warmed Erika. By then, Wayne was building roads, using huge robotic machines to flatten
the soil. Ali was cold. Gabriel was designing pipes to control the hydrology, and constructing a small