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

smeared like graphite, the calcium atoms readily surrender-
ing their valence hold on one carbon atom to grab hope-
fully for the next one in line
No stuff to hold up the piers of humanity's greatest en-
gineering project. Perhaps it was suitable for the ribs of some
Jovian jellyfish, but in a Bridge-caisson, it was cancer.
There was a scraper mechanism working on the edge of
the lesion, flaking away the shearing aminos and laying down
new ice. In the meantime, the decay of the caisson-face was
working deeper. The scraper could not possibly get at the
core of the troublewhich was not the calcium carbide dust,
with which the atmosphere was charged beyond redemption,
but was instead one imbedded sodium speck which was
taking no part in the reactionfast enough to extirpate it. It
could barely keep pace with the surface spread of the di-
sease.
And laying new ice over the surface of the wound was
worthless. At this rate, the whole caisson would slough away
and melt like butter, within an hour, under the weight of the
Bridge above it.
Helmuth sent the futile scraper aloft. Drill for it? Notoo
deep already, and location unknown.
Quickly he called two borers up from the shoals below,
where constant blasting was taking the foundation of the cais-
son deeper and deeper into Jupiter's dubious "soil". He drove
both blind, fire-snouted machines down into the lesion.
The bottom of that sore turned out to be forty-five metres
within the immense block. Helmuth pushed the red button
all the same.
The borers blew up, with a heavy, quite invisible blast, as
they had been designed to do. A pit appeared on the face of
the caisson.
The nearest truss bent upward in the wind. It fluttered for
a moment, trying to resist. It bent farther.
Deprived of its major attachment, it tore free suddenly, and
went whirling away into the blackness. A sudden flash of
lightning picked it out for a moment, and Helmuth saw it
dwindling like a bat with torn wings being borne away by
a cyclone.
The scraper scuttled down into the pit and began to fill
it with ice from the bottom. Helmuth ordered down a new
truss and a squad of scaffolders. Damage of this order took
time to repair. He watched the tornado tearing ragged
chunks from the edges of the pit until he was sure that the
catalysis had stopped. Then, suddenly, prematurely, dismally
tired, he took off the helmet.
He was astounded by the white fury that masked Eva's
big-boned, mildly pretty face.
"You'll blow the Bridge up yet, won't you?" she said,
evenly, without preamble. "Any pretext will do!"