"Cassutt, Michael - More Adventures On Other Planets" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cassutt Michael)

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The aftermath of the event is prolonged and messy. There is only momentary loss of comm between Rebecca and her element, because Element Earl moves into position at the rim of the crevasse and provides line-of-sight.
Rebecca herself experiences the loss of support and the beginning of a terrifying plunge just as surely as if she'd been standing on the Europan ice in person.

Then there is nothing.

Then there comes a rattle of almost randomly-scattered data bits, quickly telling Rebecca that her element is wedged on its side in a fisssure of ice, that her drilling arm and camera have been torn off. She is blind, broken, beyond reach.

But alive. Her radio-thermal power source ensures that Element Rebecca will continue to send data for the next several years.

Nauseous from his medication and the horrifying accident, Earl can do nothing but wait, though not silently. Even while operating Element Earl, he has grown irritated with the mission control team's obvious distraction, as the ghost sonar squiggle of a theoretical Europan life form is played over and over again. "Haas," he snaps on the open loop, "drop the Ahab routine and pay some fucking attention here."

"No need to get nasty, Earl," Haas says. "We're on top of things."

"If you were on top of things, she wouldn't have fallen."

"Earl," Rebecca says. "It's okay."

Hearing her voice quiets him, as does the false serenity of the Europan landscape. Jupiter is at the edge of his field of vision. The sight angers him. Big, fat useless ball of iceЧ

Then he sees nothing at all. The link between Element Earl and La Jolla still functions, but the La Jolla end has failed.




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Earl Tolan is taken to UC-SD Medical Center, where he dies four hours later. The cause of death is listed as a heart attack; the real cause is almost certainly complications from throat cancer and related treatment.
Once over her shock at the double loss of a single dayЧElement Rebecca and Earl himselfЧRebecca sees the unexpected heart attack as a blessing, saving Earl and Rebecca and Jordan the horror of the almost certain laryngectomy and talking through a stoma and more radiation and the swelling and the pain and the horror of knowing that it will never get better, only worse.

Rebecca helps Jordan dispose of Earl's possessions. The Atropos is the trickiest of them, ultimately sold for a pittance in a depressed boating market.

The submersible element records more ghost blips before falling silent, a victim of cold, several weeks past its design life. Rebecca resigns from the operator program and is reassigned to AGC's "advanced planning" unit, helping with the design of a new set of elements for another Europan mission.

One day three months after that awful day she returns to mission control, dons a SLIPPER suit and spends a few moments on the icy plains of Europa with Element Earl.

Her last command aims him across Point Loma toward distant Catalina.


The End