"Blish, James - Bridge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blish James)

Baffled, Helmuth turned his head helplessly away; but that
was no better. The suffused face of Jupiter peered swollenly
through the picture-port, just as it did on the foreman's desk.
He and Eva and Charity and the gang and the whole of
satellite V were falling forward towards Jupiter; their unevent-
ful cooped-up lives on Jupiter V were utterly unreal com-
pared to the four hours of each changeless day spent on
Jupiter's everchanging surface. Every new day brought their
minds, like ships out of control, closer and closer to that
gaudy inferno.
There was no other way for a manor a womanon
Jupiter V to look at the giant planet. It was simple experience,
shared by all of them, that planets do not occupy four-fifths
of the whole sky, unless the observer is himself up there m
that planet's sky, falling, falling faster and faster
"I have no intention," he said tiredly, "of blowing up the
Bridge. I wish you could get it through your head that I
want the Bridge to stay upeven though I'm not starry-eyed
to the point of incompetence about the project. Did you think
that rotten spot was going to go away by itself when you'd
painted it over? Didn't you know that"
Several helmeted, masked heads nearby turned blindly to-
wards the sound of his voice. Helmuth shut up. Any distract-
ing conversation or activity was taboo, down here in the
gang room. He motioned Eva back to duty.
The girl donned her helmet obediently enough, but it was
plain from the way her normally full lips were thinned that
she thought Helmuth had ended the argument only in order to
have the last word.
Helmuth strode to the thick pillar which ran down the
central axis of the shack, and mounted the spiralling cleats
towards his own foreman's cubicle. Already he felt in antici-
pation the weight of the helmet upon his own head.
Charity Dillon, however, was already wearing the helmet;
he was sitting in Helmuth's chair.
Charity was characteristically oblivious of Helmuth's en-
trance. The Bridge operator must learn to ignore, to be utterly
unconscious of anything happening around his body except the
inhuman sounds of signals; must learn to heed only those
senses which report something going on thousands of miles
away.
Helmuth knew better than to interrupt him. Instead, he
watched Dillon's white, blade-like fingers roving with blind
sureness over the controls.
Dillon, evidently, was making a complete tour of the Bridge
not only from end to end, but up and down, too. The tally
board showed that he had already activated nearly two-thirds
of the ultraphone eyes. That meant that he had been up all
night at the job; had begun it immediately after last talking
to Helmuth.