"Kevin J. Anderson -1993- Assemblers of Infinity (v1.0) (txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Kevin J)Newellen's own answer overlapped hers in the transmission lag. "Something's screwing with the electronics. Failures are showing up everywhere." The image jerked, as if some piece had just snapped off the supports. But Newellen managed to swivel the camera around, zooming in on the spiderlike leg of the probe.
The gleaming gold surface showed grainy pitting. As she watched, Celeste saw it fizzing like foam. "The whole thing is disintegrating!" Dvorak said. The hopper canted, then toppled over on its side. The image swung wildly to display the silent, gossamer towers stretching toward the stars. Then all the windows on the viewing wall filled with a thunderstorm of static before Fukumitsu closed them, bringing Dvorak's image back into the primary position. "I don't know what else we can do," Dvorak said. "No radiation bursts, no energy surges. I didn't detect anything that could have caused this!" "All right," Celeste tried to sound soothing to cover his alarm. "I want you to try again. If it's radiating in the infrared, I want an IR flyover. Put a new sensor package into those javelin probes you've been deploying to take remote core samples for the geologists. Next time, arrange for a sample-return mission." "We need a closer look," the general said. "I'm not going to send a person out there. I've already lost three people, and now this probe," said Jason. She paused to ponder her options. "No, we can do it remotely. Something in the area itself seems to be disintegrating our machines. We've got to grab a chunk of that regolith, then return. But I don't want to risk contaminating Columbus if it's something in the dirt. You can set up an isolated laboratory in the Sim-Mars module -- that should be far enough away from the moonbase to keep you safe." Dvorak spoke again, sounding formal now, "I don't think I have the facilities here to do much, Director McConnell. We aren't a full-fledged research station, you know." She sighed. "I'm going to gather a team of experts to help you out. We'll even send them up if need be, but we need to know more before I can choose." Dvorak nodded, still looking overwhelmed, but a bit more relieved. "All right, but I think it's time we go public with this. Waite, Lasserman, and Snow deserve that at least." "I agree. I have no intention of keeping this a secret," Celeste said. "No intention at all." After Dvorak had signed off, General Pritchard remained grim faced. Celeste placed a hand on his shoulder, which startled him. His uniform felt crisp and uncomfortable beneath her palm. "Well, General, how is that for an outside threat? I don't think you need to continue your Icarus scenarios. Do you think we can stir up a little interest now?" *CHAPTER 3* - ANTARCTICA The fat tires of the Mars Exploration Rover lurched over the jagged rock outcropping. The thin-walled vehicle bounced as it righted itself, straining against the wind. Inside the pressurized compartment, Kent Woodward gripped the steering controls with one hand. "Vroom! Vroom!" he said, and chuckled. "I wish this thing went faster than thirty klicks. Maybe the headwind is slowing us down." Beside him, Gunther Mosby muttered an expression of alarm in German, grabbed his spacesuit helmet, and pulled it back on. "What if this were the true Martian environment out there? You could get us both killed!" Kent looked out the sturdy pane of the viewport. The vast, white landscape was scoured by snow and wind. A high haze in the sky masked most of the blue, leaving it indistinct from the Antarctic plain. Sharp lumps of brown rock dotted the monotony. Kent tried to envision it as Mars, the lifeless nothingness of ochre dust, impossibly cold temperatures, and not enough air to breathe. But the illusion didn't work. He saw only earthbound terrain. "You're going to infect yourself with a healthy neurosis, Gunny, if you keep dodging reality." Gunther blinked, as if running the words through his mind again. "Excuse me, Kent. I do not understand a 'healthy neurosis.' What is healthy about a neurosis? Is this an imagined problem about being too healthy?" Kent shook his head and kept driving. Gunther tried hard to control his sharp accent, which made him speak with such slow precision that it maddened Kent. He had quickly been able to use Gunther's preoccupation with speaking perfect English for a few jokes of his own. The Mars practice mission had kept the six-person crew in low-Earth orbit for three months, simulating travel time in zero gravity. Then they had landed in Antarctica -- the closest thing to Mars's primal cold and desolation -- for a 600-day stay. They had set up the same inflatable habitation modules they would use on Mars, extracted water and methane fuel by breaking down atmospheric carbon dioxide with catalytic converters. Even their communication via optical uplink to the main control centers was artificially delayed by ten to forty minutes, depending on the current distance of Mars from Earth. They were on a real training mission -- they might as well have been on another planet. All six of them had been living under austere conditions for nearly a year now, and Kent looked for any break in the monotony he could find. |
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