"James Tiptree Jr. - Second Going" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tiptree James Jr)

"So by then it was coming pitch dark on Mars, only the Lander's lights glaring
on a pebbly plain with cracks in it. The computer colored it red, I guess it
was. Mission Control wouldn't let them get out then. They were ordered to
sleep until it got full light again. Ten hours ... Imagine, sleeping your
first night on Mars!

"The last thing was, Perry up in the command module reported a glow of light
on the eastern horizon. It wasn't a moon risingwe'd already seen one of
those. A little greenish crescent, going like crazy.

"So during the night Perry was supposed to check on what might be glowing
toward the easta volcano, maybe? But by the time he came around to where he
could see the place again, the glow had faded to nearly nothing, and next trip
there was nothing at all to see.

"At this time a relief crew was on the CRTs in Mission Control, but every so
often one of the men who were supposed to be sleeping in their quarters next
door would come in and just stare at the screens for a few minutes. All you
could see was a faint, jagged horizon line, and then the stars began.
"First light was supposed to be at 5:50 A.M. our time (see, I even remember
numbers!) and by that time the whole day crew was back in the room, everybody
all mixed together, and all wanting coffee and Danishes.

"On the screens the sky was getting just a little lighter, so the horizon
looked sharper and darker until suddenly a faint lightness came on the ground
plain in front of the mountains. And then came a minute I'll never forget.
Like the whole room was holding its breath, only whispering or rustling a
little around their dark screens. And then Eggy Stone yelled out loud and
clear:

"'There's something there! It's big! Oh, man!'

"That made it official, what the sharpeyed ones thought they'd been picking
up but couldn't believe, and everybody was jabbering at once. And the voices
of the astronauts cutting through everything, with that fourandahalfminute
lag, about how this Thing was sitting in front of them unlit, unmoving, no
indication of how it had come there, whether it crawled or flew in or bored up
out of the ground. Of course, they thought it was Martians.

"What it was was a great big, say fiftymeterlong, dumbbell shape lying there
about a hundred meters in front of their main window. It was two huge
spheroids, or hexasomethings, connected by one big fat center barreally like
a dumbbell. Only in the middle of the connection was a chamber, say three
meters each way. We could see right in because its whole front side was folded
back like a big gullwing door. It appeared to be padded inside. The computer
called it light blue, with two rustcolored lumps like cushion seats back on
the floor inside.

"And both of the big dumbbell chambers at the ends had like windows spaced all