"Ben Bova - Life As We Know It" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bova Ben)

The whole crowd seemed to surge forward slightly, lean toward the screens,
waiting.

"Impact!"

All the screens went blank for a heart-stopping instant. But before anyone could
shout or groan or even take a breath, they came on again. Radar was blank, of
course, and the infrared was just a smudge. But the blue and blue-green images
were clear and beautiful.

"My god, it's like scuba diving in Hawaii," Allie said.

That's how crisp and clear the pictures were. We could see bubbles from our
splash-in and light filtering down from the ocean's surface. The water looked
crystal clear.

And empty. No fish, no fronds of vegetation, nothing that looked like life in
that ammonia-laced water, nothing at all to be seen.

"Not deep enough yet," grumbled Lopez-Oyama. If we found nothing his career was
finished, we all knew that. I caught a glimpse of the congressional committee
chairwoman, up in the special VIP section behind plate glass windows, staring
hard at him.

For more than an hour we saw nothing but bubbles from the probe's descent. The
faint light from the surface dwindled, as we had expected. At precisely the
pre-programmed moment, the laser turned on and began sweeping its intense light
through the water.

"That should attract anything that can swim," Allie said hopefully.

"Or repel anything that's accustomed to swimming in darkness," said one of the
scientists, almost with a smirk.

The laser beam ballooned in the water, of course. I had expected that; counted
on it, really. It acted as a bright wide searchlight for me. I wanted to tell
Allie why I had chosen that specific wavelength, how proud I was that it was
working just as I had planned it would.

But her attention was riveted to the screen, and Lopez-Oyama pushed to her side
again, squeezing me out from between them.

Lopez-Oyama was perspiring. I could see drops of sweat glistening on his bald
spot.

"Deeper," he muttered. "We've got to go deeper. The ocean is heated from below.
Life forms must be down there."

I thought I heard a slightly desperate accent on the word "must."