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

and the deck is burst to flinders. The scaffolding is all gone,
too, of course. A pretty big piece, all right, Charitytwo
miles through at a minimum."
DiUon sighed. He, too, went to the window, and looked
out. Helmuth did not need to be a mind reader to know what
he was looking at. Out there, across the stony waste of Jupi-
ter V plus one hundred and twelve thousand and six hundred
miles of space, the South Tropical Disturbance was streaming
towards the great Red Spot. and would soon overtake it.
When the whirling funnel of the STDmore than big enough
to suck three Earths into deep-freezepassed the planetary is-
land of sodium-tainted ice which was the Red Spot, the Spot
would follow it for a few thousand miles, at the same time
rising closer to the surface of the atmosphere.
Then the Spot would sink again, drifting back towards the
incredible jet of stress-fluid which kept it in beinga jet fed
by no one knew what forces at Jupiter's hot, rocky, twenty-
two-thousand-mile core, under sixteen thousand miles of eter-
nal ice. During the entire passage, the storms all over Jupiter
became especially violent; and the Bridge had been forced
to locate in anything but the calmest spot on the planet,
thanks to the uneven distribution of the few permanent land-
masses.
Helmuth watched Dillon with a certain compassion, tem-
pered with mild envy. Charity Dillon's unfortunate given
name betrayed him as the son of a hangover, the only male
child of a Witness family which dated back to the great Wit-
ness Revival of 2003. He was one of the hundreds of govern-
ment-drafted experts who had planned the Bridge, and he
was as obsessed by the Bridge as Helmuth wasbut for dif-
ferent reasons.
Helmuth moved back to the port, dropping his hand gen-
tly upon Dillon's shoulder. Together they looked at the scream-
ing straw yellows, brick reds, pinks, oranges, browns, even
blues and greens that Jupiter threw across the ruined stone
of its innermost satellite. On Jupiter V, even the shadows had
colour.
Dillon did not move. He said at last: "Are you pleased,
Bob?"
"Pleased?" Helmuth said in astonishment. "No. It scares
me white; you know that. I'm just glad that the whole Bridge
didn't go."
"You're quite sure?" Dillon said quietly.
Helmuth took his hand from Dillon's shoulder and returned
to his seat at the central desk. "You've no right to needle
me for something I can't help," he said, his voice even low-
er than Dillon's. "I work on Jupiter four hours a daynot
actually, because we can't keep a man alive for more than
a split second down therebut my eyes and my ears and my
mind are there, on the Bridge, four hours a day. Jupiter is not