"Niven, Larry - Limits (SS Coll)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

When we understood all that they unlocked the doors.

An hour later the alarms sounded. "Outside. Suit up. Emergency outside!" McLeve's voice announced. Those already in their suits went for the airlocks. I began half-heartedly putting on mine, in no hurry. I was sure I'd never get my swollen, pulsing head inside the helmet. Jack Halfey dashed past, suited and ready. He dove for the airlock.

Halfey. The indispensible man. With a defective connector for an air intake.

I fumbled with the fasteners. One of the construction people was nearby and I got his help. He couldn't understand my frantic haste.

"Bastards kidnapped us," he muttered. "Let them do the frigging work. Not me."

I didn't want to argue with him, I just wanted him to hurry.

A strut had given way, and a section of the solar panel was off center. It had to be straightened, and we couldn't turn off the thrust while we did it. True, our total thrust was tiny, a quarter of a percent of a gravity, hardly enough, to notice, but we needed it all.

Because otherwise we'd go out toward the Belt but we wouldn't get there, and by the time the Shack-Skylark, now- returned inevitably to Earth orbit there'd be no one alive aboard her.

I noticed all the work, but I didn't help. Someone cursed me, but I went on, looking for Halfey.

I saw him. I dove for him, neglecting safety lines, forgetting everything. I had to get to him before that connector went.

His suit blew open across the middle. As if the fabric had been weakened with, say, acid. Jack screamed and tried to hold himself together.

He had no safety line either. When he let go he came loose from the spiderweb. Skylark pulled away from him, slowly, two and a half centimeters per second; slow but inexorable.

I lit where he'd been, turned, and dove for him. I got him and used my reaction pistol to drive us toward the airlock.

I left it on too long. We were headed fast for the airlock entrance, too fast, we'd hit too hard. I tumbled about to get Jack across my back so that I'd be between him and the impact. I'd probably break a leg, but without Halfey I might as well have a broken neck and get it over with.

Leon Briscoe, our chemist, had the same idea. He got under us and braced, reaction, pistol flaring behind us. We hit in a menage a trois, with me as Lucky Pierre.

Leon cracked an ankle. I ignored him as I threw Halfey into the airlock and slammed it shut, hit the recycle switch. Air hissed in.

Jack had a nosebleed, and his cough sounded bad; but he was breathing. He'd been in vacuum about forty seconds. Fortunately the decompression hadn't been totally explosive. The intake line to his suit had fractured a half second before the fabric blew..

The Moon grew in the scopes. Grew and kept growing, until it wasn't a sphere but a circle, and still it grew. There were mountains dead ahead.

"How close?", I demanded.

Dot had her eyes glued to a radar scope. "Not too close. About a kilometer"

"A kilometer!" One thousand meters. "You said two, before."

"So I forgot the shuttle pilot." She continued to stare at the scope, then her fingers bashed at the console keyboard. "Make that 800 meters," she said absently

I was past saying anything. I watched the Moon grow and grow. Terror banished the last of my hangover, amazing what adrenalin in massive doses can do. Jill looked worse than I did. And I didn't know. Were we lovers?

"Thirty seconds to periastron," Dot said.

"How close?" McLeve asked.