"Clarke, Arthur C - Odissey Two" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clarke Arthur C)

'Don't pretend to be naive, Woody. Your space-pod radios aren't built to withstand even a hundredth of that acceleration. If they could survive, so could Bowman - at least, until we lost contact.'

'Just doing an independent check on your deductions. From there on, we're as much in the dark as you are. If you are.'

'Merely playing with lots of crazy guesses I'd be ashamed to tell you. Yet none of them, I suspect, will be half as crazy as the truth.'

In small crimson explosions the navigation warning lights winked on all around them, and the three slim towers supporting the antenna complex began to blaze like beacons against the darkling sky. The last red sliver of the sun vanished below the surrounding hills; Heywood Floyd waited for the Green Flash, which he had never seen. Once again, he was disappointed.

'So, Dimitri,' he said, 'let's get to the point. Just what are you driving at?'

'There must be a vast amount of priceless information stored in Discovery's data banks; presumably it's still being gathered, even though the ship's stopped transmitting. We'd like to have that.'

'Fair enough. But when you get out there, and Leonov makes a rendezvous, what's to prevent you from boarding Discovery and copying everything you want?'

'I never thought I'd have to remind you that Discovery is United States territory, and an unauthorized entry would be piracy.'

'Except in the event of a life-or-death emergency, which wouldn't be difficult to arrange. After all, it would be hard for us to check what your boys were up to, from a billion kilometres away.'

'Thanks for the most interesting suggestion; I'll pass it on. But even if we went aboard, it would take us weeks to learn all your systems, and read out all your memory banks. What I propose is cooperation. I'm convinced that's the best idea - but we may both have a job selling it to our respective bosses.'

'You want one of our astronauts to fly with Leonov?'

'Yes - preferably an engineer who's specialized in Discovery's systems. Like the ones you're training at Houston to bring the ship home.'

'How did you know that?'

'For heaven's sake, Woody - it was on Aviation Week's videotext at least a month ago.'

'I am out of touch; nobody tells me what's been declassified.'

'All the more reason to spend time in Washington. Will you back me up?'

'Absolutely. I agree with you one hundred per cent. But -'

'But what?'

'We both have to deal with dinosaurs with brains in their tails. Some of mine will argue: Let the Russians risk their necks, hurrying out to Jupiter. We'll be there anyway a couple of years later - and what's the hurry?'

For a moment there was silence on the antenna raft, except for a faint creak from the immense supporting cables that held it suspended a hundred metres in the sky. Then Moisevitch continued, so quietly that Floyd had to strain to hear him: 'Has anyone checked Discovery's orbit lately?'

'I really don't know - but I suppose so. Anyway, why bother? It's a perfectly stable one.'

'Indeed. Let me tactlessly remind you of an embarrassing incident from the old NASA days. Your first space station - Skylab. It was supposed to stay up at least a decade, but you didn't do your calculations right. The air drag in the ionosphere was badly underestimated, and it came down years ahead of schedule. I'm sure you remember that little cliffhanger, even though you were a boy at the time.'

'It was the year I graduated, and you know it. But Discovery doesn't go anywhere near Jupiter. Even at perigee - er, perijove - it's much too high to be affected by atmospheric drag.'

'I've already said enough to get me exiled to my dacha again - and you might not be allowed to visit me next time. So just ask your tracking people to do their job more carefully, will you? And remind them that Jupiter has the biggest magnetosphere in the Solar System.'

'I understand what you're driving at - many thanks. Anything else before we go down? I'm starting to freeze.'