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

a nice place. I don't like it. I won't pretend I do.
"Spending four hours a day in an environment like that
over a period of yearswell, the human mind instinctively
tries to adapt, even to the unthinkable. Sometimes I wonder
how I'll behave when I'm put back in Chicago again. Some-
times I can't remember anything about Chicago except vague
generalities, sometimes I can't even believe there is such
a place as Earthhow could there be, when the rest of
the universe is like Jupiter, or worse?"
"I know," Dillon said. "I've tried several times to show
you that isn't a very reasonable frame of mind."
"I know it isn't. But I can't help how I feel. No, I don't
think the Bridge will last. It can't last; it's all wrong. But
I don't want to see it go. I've just got sense enough to know
that one of these days Jupiter is going to sweep it away."
He wiped an open palm across the control boards, snapping
all the toggles "Off" with a sound like the fall of a double-
handful of marbles on a pane of glass. "Like that. Char-
ity! And I work four hours a day, every day, on the Bridge.
One of these days, Jupiter is going to destroy the Bridge.
It'll go flying away in little flinders into the storms. My
mind will be there, supervising some puny job, and my mind
will go flying away along with my mechanical eyes and ears
still trying to adapt to the unthinkable, tumbling away into
the winds and the flames and the rains and the darkness
and the pressure and the cold."
"Bob, you're deliberately running away with yourself. Cut it
out. Cut it out, I say!"
Helmuth shrugged, putting a trembling hand on the edge
of the board to steady himself. "All right. I'm all right,
Charity. I'm here, aren't I? Right here on Jupiter V, in no
danger, in no danger at all. The Bridge is one hundred and
twelve thousand and six hundred miles away from here. But
when the day comes that the Bridge is swept away
"Charity, sometimes I imagine you ferrying my body back
to the cosy nook it came from, while my soul goes tumbling
and tumbling through millions of cubic miles of poison. All
right. Charity, I'll be good. I won't think about it out loud;
but you can't expect me to forget it. It's on my mind; I can't
help it, and you should know that."
"I do," Dillon said, with a kind of eagerness. "I do, Bob.
I'm only trying to help, to make you see the problem as it is.
The Bridge isn't really that awful, it isn't worth a single
nightmare."
"Oh, it isn't the Bridge that makes me yell out when I'm
sleeping," Helmuth said, smiling bitterly. "I'm not that ridden
by it yet. It's while I'm awake that I'm afraid the Bridge
will be swept away. What I sleep with is a fear of myself."
"That's a sane fear. You're as sane as any of us," Dillon
insisted, fiercely solemn. "Look, Bob. The Bridge isn't a mon-