"Kim Stanley Robinson - Mars 4 - The Martians" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

'Well, I try not to be too analytical about that! You know - it's a
danger in my job, becoming too analytical. I try to let my own feelings alone,
as long as they aren't bothering me somehow.'
She nodded. 'Very sensible, I'm sure. I don't know if I could manage
that. I should try. It's all the same to me. That's not always good. Not
appropriate.' With a quick sidelong smile at him.
She would say anything to him. He thought about this, and decided that
it was a matter of their respective situations: since he was staying behind,
and she was going (she seemed so sure), it didn't much matter what she said to
him. It was as if he were dying to her, and she therefore giving herself to
him, openly, as a farewell gift.
But he wanted her to care about what she said to him.
On April 18th the sun went away. In the morning it sparked in the east,
shining directly up the valley for a minute or two, and then with a faint
green flash it slipped behind Mount Newell. After that the dark days had
midday twilights, shorter every day; then just night. Starry starry night. It
was beyond Martian, this constant darkness - living by starlight with the
aching cold outside, experiencing sensory deprivation in everything but one's
sense of cold. Michel, a Provencal, found that he hated both the cold and the
dark. So did many of the others. They had been living in an Antarctic summer,
thinking life was good and that Mars would not be such a challenge after all,
and then with winter they were suddenly getting a better idea of what Mars
would be like - not exactly, but in the sense of experiencing a massive array
of deprivations. It was sobering how hard it hit.
Of course some did better than others. Some seemed not even to notice.
The Russians had experienced cold and dark almost like this before. Tolerance
of confinement was also good among the senior
_scientists - Sax Russell, Vlad Taneev, Marina Tokareva, Ursula Kohl, Ann
Clayborne - these and other dedicated scientists seemed to have the capacity
to spend great amounts of their time reading, working at their computers, and
talking. Presumably lives spent largely in labs had prepared them.
They also understood that this was the life Mars was waiting to give
them. Something not that different from the lives they had always led. So that
the best analogy to Mars, perhaps, was not Antarctica, but any intense
scientific laboratory.

This led him to thoughts of the optimum life history when considering
inclusion in the group: middle-aged lab scientist, dedicated, accomplished;
childless; unmarried or divorced. Lots of applicants fitted the criteria. In
some ways you had to wonder. Though it wouldn't be fair; it was a life pattern
with its own integrity, its own rewards. Michel himself fitted the bill in
every respect.
Naturally he had to divide his attention equally among all of the
candidates, and he did. But one day he got to accompany Tatiana Durova alone,
on a hike up the South Fork of Wright Valley. They hiked to the left of the
flat-topped island ridge called the Dais that divided the valley lengthways,
and continued up the southern arm of Wright Valley to Don Juan Pond.
Don Juan Pond: what a name for this extraterrestrial desolation! The
pond was so salty that it would not freeze until the air chilled to -54 C;
then the ice coating the shallow saline pond, having been distilled by the