"Baxter, Stephen - Moon Six" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baxter Stephen)

"How about that. We is looking at a full-up mission here, boy."
They finish up quickly, and set off at a run to the next stop. Slade looks
like a human-shaped beach ball, his suit brilliant white, bouncing over
the beach-like surface of the Moon. He is whistling.
They are approaching the walls of Wildwood Crater. Bado is going slightly
uphill, and he can feel it. The carrier, loaded up with rocks, is getting
harder to carry too. He has to hold it up to his chest, to keep the rocks
from bouncing out when he runs, and so he is constantly fighting the
stiffness of his pressure suit.
"Hey, Bado," Slade says. He comes loping down the slope. He points. "Take
a look."
Bado has, he realises, reached the rim of Wildwood Crater. He is standing
on top of its dune-like, eroded wall. And there, planted in the crater's
centre, is the Surveyor. It is less than a hundred yards from him. It is a
squat, three-legged frame, like a broken-off piece of a LM.
Slade grins. "Does that look neat? We got it made, Bado." Bado claps his
commander's shoulder. "Outstanding, man." He knows that for Slade, getting
to the Surveyor, bringing home a few pieces of it, is the finish line for
the mission.
Bado looks back east, the way they have come. He can see the big, shallow
dip in the land that is Taylor, with the LM resting at its centre like a
toy in the palm of some huge hand. It is a glistening, filmy construct of
gold leaf and aluminium, bristling with antennae, docking targets, and
reaction control thruster assemblies.
Two sets of footsteps come climbing up out of Taylor towards them, like
footsteps on a beach after a tide.
Bado tips back on his heels and looks at the sky.
The sky is black, empty of stars; his pupils are closed up by the dazzle
of the sun, and the reflection of the pale brown lunar surface. But he can
see the Earth, a fat crescent, four times the size of a full moon. And
there, crossing the zenith, is a single, brilliant, unwinking star: the
orbiting Apollo CSM, with Al Pond, their Command Module pilot, waiting to
take them home.
There is a kind of shimmer, like a heat haze. And the star goes out.
Just like that: it vanishes from the sky, directly over Bado's head. He
blinks, and moves his head, stiffly, thinking he might have just lost the
Apollo in the glare.
But it is gone.
What, then? Can it have moved into the shadow of the Moon? But a little
thought knocks out that one: the geometry, of sun and Moon and spacecraft,
is all wrong.
And anyhow, what was that heat haze shimmer? You don't get heat haze where
there's no air.
He lowers his head. "Hey, Slade. You see that?"
But Slade isn't anywhere to be seen, either; the slope where he's been
standing is smooth, empty.
Bado feels his heart hammer.
He lets go of the tool carrier - it drifts down to the dust, spilling
rocks - and he lopes forward. "Come on, Slade. Where the hell are you?"
Slade is famous for gotchas; he is planning a few that Bado knows about,