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

Scobie gasped. He stared before him.
"Colin?" Danzig called. "You still there?"
"Yes. Yes."
"I asked what observations of any importance you made."
"I don't know," Scobie mumbled. "I can't remember. None of it after we started climbing seems real."
"Better you return right away," Danzig said grimly. "Forget about photographs."
"Correct." Scobie addressed his companions: "Forward march."
"I can't," Alvarlan answers. "A wanderin' spell has caught my spirit in tendrils of smoke."
"I know where a fire dagger is kept," Ricia says. "I'll try to steal it."
Broberg moved ahead, as though to descend into the crater. Tiny ice grains trickled over the verge from beneath her boots. She could easily lose her footing and slide down.
"No, wait," Kendrick shouts to her. "No need. My spearhead is of moon alloy. It can cut-"
The glacier shuddered. The ridge cracked asunder and fell in shards. The area on which the humans stood split free and toppled into the bowl. An avalanche poured after. Highflung crystals caught sunlight, glittered prismatic in challenge to the stars, descended slowly and lay quiet.
Except for shock waves through solids, everything had happened in the absolute silence of space.

Heartbeat by heartbeat, Scobie crawled back to his senses. He found himself held down, immobilized, in darkness and pain. His armor had saved, was still saving his life; he had been stunned but escaped a real concussion. Yet every breath hurt abominably. A rib or two on the left side seemed broken; a monstrous impact must have dented metal. And he was buried under more weight than he could move.
"Hello," he coughed. "Does anybody read me?" The single reply was the throb of his blood. If his radio still worked which it should, being built into the suit-the mass around him screened him off.
It also sucked heat at an unknown but appalling rate. He felt no cold because the electrical system drew energy from his fuel cell as fast as needed to keep him warm and to recycle his air chemically. As a normal thing, when he lost heat through the slow process of radiation-and a trifle through kero foam lined bootsoles-the latter demand was much the greater. Now conduction was at work on every square centimeter. He had a spare unit in the equipment on his back, but no means of getting at it.
Unless- He barked forth a chuckle. Straining, he felt the stuff that entombed him yield the least bit under the pressure of arms and legs. And his helmet rang slightly with noise, a rustle, a gurgle. This wasn't water ice that imprisoned him, but stuff with a much lower freezing point. He was melting it, subliming it, making room for himself.
If he lay passive, he would sink, while frozenness above slid down to keep him in his grave. He might evoke superb

new formations, but he would not see them. Instead, he must use the small capability given him to work his way upward, scrabble, get a purchase on matter that was not yet aflow, burrow to the stars.
He began.
Agony soon racked him. Breath rasped in and out of lungs aflame. His strength drained away and trembling took its place, and he could not tell whether he ascended or slipped back. Blind, half suffocated, Scobie made mole-claws of his hands and dug.
It was too much to endure. He fled from it-
His strong enchantments failing, the Elf King brought down his towers of fear in wreck. If the spirit of Alvarlan returned to its body, the wizard would brood upon things he had seen, and understand what they meant, and such knowledge would give mortals a terrible power against Faerie. Waking from the sleep, the King cried Kendrick about to release that fetch. There was no time to do more than break the spell which upheld the Dance Hall. It was largely built of mist and star shine, but enough blocks quarried from the cold side of Ginnungagap were in it that when they crashed they should kill the knight. Ricia would perish too, and in his quicksilver intellect the King regretted that. Nevertheless he spoke the necessary word.
He did not comprehend how much abuse flesh and bone can bear. Sir Kendrick fights his way clear of the ruins, to seek and save his lady. While he does, he heartens himself with thoughts of adventures past and future-
-and suddenly the blindness broke apart and Saturn stood lambent within rings.
Scobie belly-flopped onto the surface and lay shuddering.
He must rise, no matter how his injuries screamed, lest he melt himself a new burial place. He lurched to his feet and glared around.
Little but outcroppings and scars was left of the sculpture. For the most part, the crater had become a smooth-sided whiteness under heaven. Scarcity of shadows made distances
hard to gauge, but Scobie guessed the new depth was about seventy-five meters. And empty, empty.
"Mark, do-you hear?" he cried.
"That you, Colin?" rang in his earpieces. "Name of mercy, what's happened? I heard you call out, and saw a cloud rise and sink . . . then nothing for more than an hour. Are you okay?"
"1 am, sort of. I don't see Jean or Luis. A landslide took us by surprise and buried us. Hold on while I search."
When he stood upright, Scobie's ribs hurt less. He could move about rather handily if he took care. The two types of standard analgesic in his kit were alike useless, one too weak to give noticeable relief, one so strong that it would turn him sluggish. Casting to and fro, he soon found what he expected, a concavity in the tumbled snow like material, slightly aboil.
Also a standard part of his gear was a trenching tool. Scobie set pain aside and dug. A helmet appeared. Broberg's head was within it. She too had been tunneling out.
"Jean!"
"Kendrick!" She crept free and they embraced, suit to suit. "Oh, Colin."
"How are you?" rattled from him.
"Alive," she answered. "No serious harm done, I think. A lot to be said for low gravity . . . . You? Luis?" Blood was clotted in a streak beneath her nose, and a bruise on her forehead was turning purple, but she stood firmly and spoke clearly.
"I'm functional. Haven't found Luis yet. Help me look. First, though, we'd better check out our equipment."
She hugged arms around chest, as if that would do any good here. "I'm chilled," she admitted.
Scobie pointed at a telltale. "No wonder. Your fuel cell's down to its last couple of ergs. Mine isn't in a lot better shape. Let's change."
They didn't waste time removing their backpacks, but reached into each other's. Tossing the spent units to the

ground, where vapors and holes immediately appeared and then froze, they plugged the fresh ones into their suits. "Turn your thermostat down." Scobie advised. "We won't find shelter soon. Physical activity will help us keep warm."
"And require faster air recycling," Broberg reminded.
"Yeah. But for the moment, at least, we can conserve the energy in the cells. Okay, next let's check for strains, potential leaks, any kind of damage or loss. Hurry. Luis is still down there."
Inspection was a routine made automatic by years of drill. While her fingers searched across the man's spacesuit, Broberg let her eyes wander. "The Dance Hall is gone," Ricia murmurs. "I think the King smashed it to prevent our escape."
"Me too. If he finds out we're alive, and seeking for Alvarlan's soul--- Hey, wait! None of that!"