"Samuel R. Delany - High Weir" - читать интересную книгу автора (Delaney Samuel R)

down before the cracked visage and shone Rimkin's laser on the broken iris. She
looked for the whole minute it took Rimkin to reach the edge. She made puzzled
"mmmmmmmm" sounds twice.

When she joined him to climb down to the sand, she was frowning behind the white
frame of her helmet. And a couple of times she made stranger faces.

┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖


IV
The process of getting Rimkin to bed pretty well finished getting everybody else up.
When Dr. Jones wanted to give him a sedative, Rimkin went into a long and fairly
coherent discussion about the drug's causing possible upset in his enzymal
chemistry, which the others listened to seriously until suddenly he started to cry. At
last he let Jimmi give him the injection. And while the pretty Micronesian qualitative
analyst stroked his forehead, he fell asleep.

Mak, in his weight allowance for Equipment Vital to the Facilitation of Your
Specialized Functions, had secreted a Westphalian ham and a gallon of the good
Slivowitz, contending that breakfast was pointless without a hefty slice of the one
and at least a pony of the other. But he was willing to share; the ritual of breakfast
was left to his episcopacy. Anyway, he had the best luck among them beating
dehydrated eggs back into shape. Now, in the small area under the steps where
such things were done, he was clanking and fuming like a rum-and-maple dragon.

Smith came down the stairs.

A skillet cover rang on the pan rim. Mak grunted. "I didn't realize he was that bad,
Ling."

Jones folded the gaming board; the pattern of white and black fell apart. He slid the
pebbles into the pot and pushed the stud on the pot base. "I guess none of us did."
The pot began to vibrate. The white stones were substantially less dense than the
black ones, so, after a good shaking, ended up on top. "Do you think Mars is just
too much for him?" Dr. Jones had already noticed that the separation process took
longer on this lightweight planet than at home.

"Naw." Mak ducked from under the stairs with his platter of ham and eggs. The
steam rose and mixed with the pipe smoke. "This must have been building for
months, maybe all his life, if Freud's progeny are to be trusted."

He leaned over hefty Miss Hodges and set the platter down. Then he frowned at her.
"You look oddly pensive, ma'am."

Hodges, using her aluminum stalks, pushed herself around from the table so she
could see Smith, who was at the bottom of the stairs. "What happens if you cutтАФor
breakтАФa hologram plate in half, Ling?"

"I guess you get half the image," Jimmi said. She was sitting on an upper step.