"Anderson, Poul - Saturn Game by Poul Anderson" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

on the geologist, who was his friend, lost the defiance that had been in it and turned wistful. "You might try recalling Delia Ames."
Scobie bristled. "What about her? The business was hers and mine, nobody else's."
"Except afterward she cried on Rachel's shoulder, and Rachel doesn't keep secrets from me. Don't worry, I'm not about to blab. Anyhow, Delia got over it. But if you'd recollect objectively, you'd see what had happened to you already, three years ago."
Scobie set his jaw. Danzig smiled in the left corner of his mouth. "No, I suppose you can't," he went on. "I admit I had no idea either, till now, how far the process had gone. At least keep your fantasies in the background while you're outside, will you? Can you?"

In half a decade of travel, Scobie's apartment had become idiosyncratically his-perhaps more so than was usual, since he remained a bachelor who seldom had women visitors for longer than a few night watches at a time. Much of the furniture he had made himself; the agro sections of Chronos produced wood, hide, and fiber as well as food and fresh air. His handiwork ran to massiveness and archaic carved decorations. Most of what he wanted to read he screened from the data banks, of course, but a shelf held a few old books-Child's border ballads, an eighteenth-century family Bible (despite his agnosticism), a copy of The Machinery of Freedom which had nearly disintegrated but displayed the signature of the author, and other valued miscellany. Above them stood a model of a sailboat in which he had cruised northern European waters, and a trophy he had won in handball aboard this ship. On the bulkheads hung his fencing sabers and numerous pictures-of parents and siblings, of wilderness areas he had tramped on Earth, of castles and mountains and heaths in Scotland where he had often been, of his geological team on Luna, of Thomas Jefferson and, imagined, Robert the Bruce.

On a certain even watch he had, though, been seated before his telescreen. Lights were turned low in order that he might fully savor the image. Auxiliary craft were out in a joint exercise, and a couple of their personnel used the opportunity to beam back-views of what they saw.
That was splendor. Starful space made a chalice for Chronos. The two huge, majestically counter-rotating cylinders, the entire complex of linkages, ports, locks, shields, collectors, transmitters, docks, all became Japanesely exquisite at a distance of several hundred kilometers. It was the solar sail which filled most of the screen, like a turning golden sun wheel; yet remote vision could also appreciate its spider web intricacy, soaring and subtle curvatures, even the less-than gossamer thinness. A mightier work than the Pyramids, a finer work than a refashioned chromosome, the ship moved on toward a Saturn which had become the second brightest beacon in the firmament.
The door chime hauled Scobie out of his exaltation. As he started across the deck, he stubbed his toe on a table leg. Coriolis force caused that. It was slight, when a hull this size spun to give a full gee of weight, and a thing to which he had long since adapted; but now and then he got so interested in something that Terrestrial habits returned. He swore at his absent-mindedness, good-naturedly, since he anticipated a pleasurable time.
When he opened the door, Delia Ames entered in a single stride. At once she closed it behind her and stood braced against it. She was a tall blond woman who did electronics maintenance and kept up a number of outside activities. "Hey!" Scobie said. "What's wrong? You look like"-he tried for levity-"something my cat would've dragged in, if we had any mice or beached fish aboard."
She drew a ragged breath. Her Australian accent thickened till he had trouble understanding: "I . . . today . . . I happened to be at the same cafeteria table as George Harding-"
Unease tingled through Scobie. Harding worked in Ames's department, but had much more in common with him. In the game group to which they both belonged, Harding likewise took a vaguely ancestral role, N'Kuma the Lionslayer.
"What happened?" Scobie asked.
Woe stared back at him. "He mentioned . . . you and he and the rest . . . you'd be taking your next holiday together . . . to carry on your, your bloody act uninterrupted."
"Well, yes. Work at the new park over in Starboard Hull will be suspended till enough metal's been recycled for the water pipes. The area will be vacant, and my gang has arranged to spend a week's worth of days-"
"But you and I were going to Lake Armstrong!"
"Uh, wait, that was just a notion we talked about, no definite plan yet, and this is such an unusual chance- Later, sweetheart, I'm sorry." He took her hands. They felt cold. He essayed a smile. "Now, c'mon, we were going to cook a festive dinner together and afterward spend a, shall we say, quiet evening at home. But for a start, this absolutely gorgeous presentation on the screen-"
She jerked free of him. The gesture seemed to calm her. "No, thanks," she said, flat-voiced. "Not when you'd rather be with that Broberg woman. I only came by to tell you in person I'm getting out of the way of you two."
"Huh?" He stepped back. "What the flaming hell do you mean?"
"You know jolly well."
"I don't! She, I, she's happily married, got two kids, she's older than me, we're friends, sure, but there's never been a thing between us that wasn't in the open and on the level-" Scobie swallowed. "You suppose maybe I'm in love with her?"
Ames looked away. Her fingers writhed together. "I'm not about to go on being a mere convenience to you, Colin. You have plenty of those. Myself, I'd hoped- But I was wrong, and I'm going to cut my losses before they get worse."
"But . . . Dee, I swear I haven't fallen for anybody else,

and I . . . I swear you're more than a body to me, you're a fine person-" She stood mute and withdrawn. Scobie gnawed his lip before he could tell her: "Okay, I admit it, the main reason I volunteered for this trip was I'd lost out in a love affair on Earth. Not that the project doesn't interest me; but I've come to realize what a big chunk out of my life it is. You, more than any other woman, Dee, you've gotten me to feel better about the situation."
She grimaced. "But not as much as your psychodrama has, right?"
"Hey, you must think I'm obsessed with the game. I'm not. It's fun and-oh, maybe `fun' is too weak a word-but anyhow, it's just little bunches of people getting together fairly regularly to play. Like my fencing, or a chess club, or, or anything." .
She squared her shoulders. "Well, then," she asked, "will you cancel the date you've made and spend your holiday with me?"
"I, uh, I can't do that. Not at this stage. Kendrick isn't off on the periphery of current events. He's closely involved with everybody else. If I didn't show, it'd spoil things for the rest."
Her glance steadied upon him. "Very well. A promise is a promise, or so I imagined. But afterward- Don't be afraid. I'm not trying to trap you. That would be no good, would it? However, if I maintain this liaison of ours, will you phase yourself out of your game?"
"I can't-" Anger seized him. "No, God damn it!" he roared.
"Then good-bye, Colin," she said, and departed. He stared for minutes at the door she had shut behind her.

Unlike the large Titan and Saturn-vicinity explorers, landers on the airless moons were simply modified Luna-to-space shuttles, reliable, but with limited capabilities. When the blocky shape had dropped below the horizon, Garcilaso said
into his radio, "We've lost sight of the boat, Mark. I must say it improves the view." One of the relay micro satellites which had been sown in orbit passed his words on.
"Better start blazing your trail, then," Danzig reminded.
"My, my, you are a fussbudget, aren't you?" Nevertheless, Garcilaso unholstered the squirt gun at his hip and splashed a vividly fluorescent circle of paint on the ground. He would do it at eyeball intervals until his party reached the glacier. Except where dust lay thick over the regolith, footprints were faint under the feeble gravity, and absent when a walker crossed continuous rock.
Walker? No, leaper. The three bounded exultant, little hindered by spacesuits, life-support units, tool and ration packs. The naked land fled from their haste, and ever higher, ever clearer and more glorious to see, loomed the ice ahead of them.
There was no describing it, not really. You could speak of lower slopes and palisades above, to a mean height of perhaps a hundred meters, with spires towering farther still. You could speak of gracefully curved tiers going up those braes, of lacy parapets and fluted crags and arched openings to caves filled with wonders, of mysterious blues in the depths and greens where light streamed through translucencies, of gem-sparkle across whiteness where radiance and shadow wove mandalas-and none of it would convey anything more than Scobie's earlier, altogether inadequate comparison to the Grand Canyon.
"Stop," he said for the dozenth time. "I want to take a few pictures."
"Will anybody understand them who hasn't been here?" whispered Broberg.
"Probably not," said Garcilaso in the same hushed tone. "Maybe no one but us ever will."
"What do you mean by that?" demanded Danzig's voice.
"Never mind," snapped Scobie.
"T think I know," the chemist said. "Yes, it is a great piece

of scenery, but you're letting it hypnotize you."
"If you don't cut out that drivel," Scobie warned, "we'll cut you out of the circuit. Damn it, we've got work to do. Get off our backs."
Danzig gusted a sigh. "Sorry. Uh, are you finding any clues to the nature of that-that thing?"