"CLARKE, Arthur C. - Odyssey 3 - 2061 Odyssey Three" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clarke Arthur C)

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.



'To seek, to find...' Well, now he knew what he was going to seek, and to find - because he knew exactly where it would be. Short of some catastrophic accident, there was no way in which it could possibly elude him.

It was not a goal he had ever consciously had in mind, and even now he was not quite sure why it had become so suddenly dominant. He would have thought himself immune to the fever which was once again infecting mankind - for the second time in his life! - but perhaps he was mistaken. Or it could have been that the unexpected invitation to join the short list of distinguished guests aboard Universe had fired his imagination, and awakened an enthusiasm he had not even known he possessed.

There was another possibility. After all these years, he could still remember what an anticlimax the 1985/6 encounter had been to the general public. Now was a chance - the last for him, and the first for humanity - to more than make up for any previous disappointment.

Back in the twentieth century, only flybys had been possible. This time, there would be an actual landing, as pioneering in its way as Armstrong's and Aldrin's first steps on the Moon.

Dr Heywood Floyd, veteran of the 2010-15 mission to Jupiter, let his imagination fly outwards to the ghostly visitor once again returning from the deeps of space, gaining speed second by second as it prepared to round the Sun. And between the orbits of Earth and Venus the most famous of all comets would meet the still uncompleted space-liner Universe, on her maiden flight.

The exact point of rendezvous was not yet settled, but his decision was already made.

'Halley - here I come...' whispered Heywood Floyd.



2
First Sight



It is not true that one must leave Earth to appreciate the full splendour of the heavens. Not even in space is the starry sky more glorious than when viewed from a high mountain, on a perfectly clear night, far from any source of artificial illumination. Even though the stars appear brighter beyond the atmosphere, the eye cannot really appreciate the difference; and the overwhelming spectacle of half the celestial sphere at a single glance is something that no observation window can provide.

But Heywood Floyd was more than content with his private view of the Universe, especially during the times when the residential zone was on the shadow side of the slowly revolving space hospital. Then there would be nothing in his rectangular field of view but stars, planets, nebulae - and occasionally, drowning out all else, the unblinking glare of Lucifer, new rival to the Sun.

About ten minutes before the beginning of his artificial night, he would switch off all the cabin lights - even the red emergency standby - so that he could become completely dark-adapted. A little late in life for a space engineer, he had learned the pleasures of naked-eye astronomy, and could now identify virtually any constellation, even if he could glimpse only a small portion of it.

Almost every 'night' that May, as the comet was passing inside the orbit of Mars, he had checked its location on the star charts. Although it was an easy object with a good pair of binoculars, Floyd had stubbornly resisted their aid; he was playing a little game, seeing how well his ageing eyes would respond to the challenge. Though two astronomers on Mauna Kea already claimed to have observed the comet visually, no-one believed them, and similar assertions from other residents of Pasteur had been treated with even greater scepticism.

But tonight, a magnitude of at least six was predicted; he might be in luck. He traced the line from Gamma to Epsilon, and stared towards the apex of an imaginary equilateral triangle set upon it - almost as if he could focus his vision across the Solar System by a sheer effort of will.