"Gordon R. Dickson - The Far Call 2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

Phoenix One to her two booster shuttles. There was a dull thud from what seemed behind them in
Phoenix One; and Tad reached up to activate a view of the shuttles on his pilot's screen, looking back
from a sensor camera-eye mounted near the front of the spaceship.
Full in the sunlight, looking as if they were below the underbelly of Phoenix One, the two shuttles
appeared to be falling away, separating as they went. A couple of flashes from further off told of the
sections of banding, tumbling in the sunlight as they moved away at the higher speed imparted to them by
the explosive charges releasing them. The support shuttles themselves were departing from Phoenix only
on the small push of steering thrusters. Now, as Tad, Bap and Anoshi watched, each shuttle slowly
revolved end-for-end, so that they faced in the opposite direction to which Phoenix One was still facing.
The two had lifted Phoenix One to Mars-injection orbitтАФthat point from which she would now
begin her nine-month coast to the next point where she would fire her nuclear engines to fall into a close
orbit around Mars. Now they were dwindling in the screen, looking almost tiny. It was jarring to think
that with their separation, plus the fuel they had expended, the Mars mission had already spent the
greater part of its massтАФjust for the initial departure from Earth orbit. Tad felt the diminishment almost
like a personal loss.
A little over half an hour ago, Phoenix One had weighed approximately one million six hundred
thousand pounds. Now, with the departure of the two booster shuttles, that weight was down to six
hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds. By contrast, at the time Phoenix One reached Mars, she
would have lost only an additional twenty-five thousand poundsтАФdown to six hundred and fifty thousand
pounds. Life support and consumables plus fuel needed for mid-course correction would be the reason
for the twenty-five thousand pounds that would be spent ...
Bap was murmuring something incomprehensible, his voice a low tone over the helmet phones.
"What, Bap?" Tad asked, turning his head to look at the other's couch.
Bap broke off. His helmet was facing out a port at the dwindling booster shuttles.
"What? Sorry, Tad," he said. "Just remembering something from the Bhagavad-GitaтАФ"The Song
Celestial." In English it goes something like . . . Today we slew a foe, and we will slay our other enemy
tomorrow! Look! Are we not lords . . .?"
"Hm-m-m," said Tad. The quotation seemed to have no application to the departure of the shuttles
or their present situation. But there was no understanding Bap.
I should learn to keep my thoughts to myself in my head, Bap was thinking, a little ruefully. No
point in telling them that what I quoted was part of the speech of the Unheavenly Man, as
Krishna delineates him. But it would have made no more sense to Tad and Anoshi if I had. Still, it
is true. We are very lordly here with our nuclear engines and our mission plans, close to Earth.
But out there close to Mars we will be small and insignificant. No, no point in trying to explain
what I meant or felt. To the English anything religious must be immediate and personal ...
Not, Bap corrected himself, that Tad is English. But yes, he is, in the sense I use the word. Tad is
distorted English, as Dirk over there on Phoenix Two is undistorted English. And the English do
not understand such thoughts as I was thinking. Neither the English nor the American English
understand. Would Anoshi? Not really; and in that sense, he is tinged with an English sort of color
also. Even I am tinged with English, because I am conscious of though rejecting, what it is to be
Englished. Truthfully, we are all alike, Tad, Anoshi and I.
Possibly that is part of it. I love TadтАФnonsexually, of courseтАФBap grinned in his helmet. One
always has to make that distinction when thinking in English. Why am I thinking in English?
Because I am thinking about EnglishтАФrather, about some quality I call "English." No, I have a
great affection for Tad. Once, long ago, it might have been that we rode to battle on horseback
together, swords at our waists. And Anoshi, also. It is not sheer accident that the three
swashbucklers among the six of us should find ourselves in one ship. Over in Phoenix Two, they
are in common of a different breed and cloth, once one ignores all their national differences. Even
Dirk, who is English, is not-English in that sense . . . I am becoming whirled about with words.
The words are losing me among them. I should stop thinking and return my, attention to duty ...