"Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Probationers (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

- No.
- A truly interplanetary soul! - Zhilin said with content. - When we
get on "Takhmaseeb", I will let you kiss the ignition key.


Mars. Astronomers.

Matti, covering his eyes from the blinding sun, was looking at the
dunes. The crawler was nowhere to be seen. Above the dunes hung a large
cloud of reddish dust, a weak wind was slowly shifting it sideways. All was
quiet, only at the five meter height the anemometer propeller was rustling.
Then Matti heard the shots - "pok, pok, pok, pok" - four shots in a row.
- Missed, of course, - he said.
The observatory was standing on a tall flat hill. In summer the air was
always very clear and from the hilltop the white domes and parallelepipeds
of Warm Syrt five kilometres to the South and grey ruins of the Old Base on
an identical flat high hill three kilometres to the West could be clearly
seen. But right now the Old Base was hidden by a cloud of dust. "Pok, pok,
pok", - was heard again there.
- Sharp-shooters, - Matti lamented. He examined the watch post. - What
a rotten beast, - he said.
The wide-angle camera was overturned. The meteo-box was leaning on the
side. The wall of the telescopy pavilion was smothered with some yellow
crap. Above the pavilion door shone a fresh hole from an explosive bullet.
The light above the entrance was shattered.
- Sharp-shooters, - Matty reiterated.
He walked to the pavilion and palpated the edges of the tear with his
fingers in a fur-lined glove. He thought about what mess an explosive bullet
can invoke in a pavilion and he quivered. In the pavilion stood a very nice
telescope with a beautifully repaired lens, the scintillation recorder,
blink-autoshutters - all rare, capricious and complex apparatus.
Blink-autoshutters are harmed even by dust, and must be covered with a
hermetic core. But what can the core do against an explosive bullet?
Matti did not go into the pavilion. "They should see it themselves, he
thought. - They were the ones shooting, let them be the ones to see it".
Frankly speaking, he was simply too scared to go inside. He placed the
carabine on the sand and, with some effort, lifted the camera. One foot of
the tripod was bent and the camera was standing unevenly.
- Rotten scoundrel! - said Matti with hatred. He was conducting the
meteorite filming and the camera was his sole instrument. He walked across
the entire ground to the meteo-box. The dust over the ground was dug over.
Matti was stomping with disdain upon the characteristic rounded craters -
the traces of the "flying leech". "Why does she always barge in on the
observation ground? - he was thinking. - Fine, she could at least crawl
around the house. At least break into the garage. But no, she must climb
onto the ground. Does it smell of human flesh or something?"
The door of the meteo-box was bent and would not open. Matti hopelessly
waived his hand and returned to the camera. He swivelled the camera off the
base, removed it with an effort and laid it upon the outstretched tarpaulin,
groaning. Then he lifted the tripod and carried it into the house. He stood