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

"I know." Harry held her tighter, pinning her legs and arms. "But I want a few more minutes."
She should go home, but the glow she felt, the smell and feel of Harry's body close to her, were so seductive she put it off for almost an hour. Just sitting with Harry and touching, hardly talking at all. It could never, ever be enough.
Harry walked her all the way home, kissing her at the door. She started to protest. "My dad will see."
"He likes me all right. I'll visit him while you're gone."
She stopped before they got to her door, leaning into Harry, clutching him close to her, smelling him. "I still wish you could go. I'll be lonely up there." John Glenn was so far away. "I don't want to be separated from you. I love you."
He kissed her again. "I love you too. But you can't stay, not when you can learn so much."
Rachel was so absorbed in watching Harry walk away that she jumped when her father put a hand on her shoulder. "I was wondering what you were fighting with Ursula about," he said.
"Are you angry? Did Gabriel come see you?"
"Angry about Harry? No. Cautious though. And yes, I saw Gabriel. I guess I won't have to worry about Harry for a while." He rumpled her short hair so it stood on end, and held her to him.
"I'm coming back, Daddy. I won't let them keep me up there like they kept Mom." Rachel didn't want him to see how scared she felt, so she bent her head down into his shoulder. His arms circled her back, a strong protective hug, except that she felt his hands shaking.




Part II: Air


60,269 John Glenn shiptime




Chapter 12: Space!


The force of the lander's flight through the atmosphere made Rachel dizzy. Straps dug into her shoulders and thighs. Her head felt heavy against the pillow of the copilot's acceleration couch. The hull was transparent. Harlequin filled a good part of the view, so brilliant in Apollo's light it hurt to look. Outside the diffusion of Selene's thick atmosphere, the gas giant transformed. Colors were brighter, separated, and distinct. Scrollwork storms swirled across the surface. Rachel felt tiny, awed.
"Close your eyes," Gabriel said.
She did. Why? She felt the thrust of the last few moments of flight lessen, falling away so her body rose against the straps that held her in place. She clutched the edges of the seat, pulling herself down so she stayed fully connected to the chair. Her stomach turned lazily, not ill, but floating. It felt a little like catching an updraft and riding it, but without the pull of wings against her shoulders and biceps.
"Why do I feel so light?"
"There's no gravity out here. When we took off, engine thrust made you feel heavy, like when we take off in a plane. We'll still be moving fast, but you won't feel it the same way."
"Will there be gravity on the John Glenn?"
"In most places. Do you feel sick?"
"N-no. A little dizzy."
"Good. Now, open your eyes." Gabriel sounded excited.
A slightly ovoid shape hung in center view. Browns and deep reds and tans floated across it, and just above center, a huge crater filled with crystal blue. The Hammered Sea! Selene.
The texture was all interlocking circles and arcs. Veins of blue flowed along the surface, following the arcs or jumping between, reaching out like strands of hair to lace half the ball with thin blue lines. Two tiny spots of green sprouted between two smaller craters.
"Oh," she said. "Oh—it's perfect." She smiled, entranced, the pull of it against her very center harder even than the day she stood at the edge of the Hammered Sea and saw more water than she had known existed.
"No," Gabriel said, "it's not perfect. See where the water's trapped in those two craters? We didn't mean that—we wanted one sea. The places that are too red? That's too much iron, miscalculations—"
He was looking at it all wrong! "Look at how pretty the seas are—so what if they aren't exactly like you thought they'd be? You were excited about showing it to me from here. Weren't you? Selene is like my garden plot—it's even better for the mistakes I had to work around. It's home, Gabriel—it's beautiful from here. I never knew how pretty the seas ..." Her words ran off, they weren't changing the look on Gabriel's face. "You're not seeing—"
Gabriel's voice was stern as he cut her off. "We made it, Rachel. It was nothing before we got here. It was a rock half that size. It's not like a real planet."
"But—"
"There's more to see out here." His voice changed tone. "Astronaut—get me a ring view." His fingertips brushed a tray of lights. The little ship began to rotate, so that Selene fell away from her view, replaced with so many stars she couldn't count them ... and all around, so she could see new stars she'd never noticed from Selene. Three close-packed bright stars glimmered under her feet. Her stomach lurched again, and she swallowed. "How are we moving?" she asked.
"Batteries. We charge them with antimatter."
"Antimatter? I thought you ran the ship dry!"
Gabriel laughed. "We need very little for this sort of thing, Rachel. But to go any distance at all—to go to even the closest star you see—that's when we need a big store of it."
"Then why don't we use antimatter for power on Selene?" She thought of all the time her dad spent maintaining the huge solar arrays.
"We never use antimatter casually. It's hard to handle. Dangerous if it gets loose. We prefer to move it as little as possible."
She fell silent, confused at Gabriel's mood changes. Why didn't he like Selene? He was always talking about work he did—bragging even. Sometimes he volunteered information, teaching her. Other times he seemed to be keeping it from her.
Lights flickered and changed around his fingertips. The ship banked and picked up speed.
"Could I learn to fly this?"