"Philip Jose Farmer - Jesus on Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

Though he knew that it was irrational, Orme had felt guilty about it. Part of the
guilt came from his elation at having won.
Orme glanced at the chronometer and said, 'Time to start the next phase.'
Danton stayed at the console; Bronski and Shirazi got busy helping Orme
to suit up. Then Orme helped the Iranian to get Bronski into his armour.
Meanwhile, Danton, in her slightly French-accented English, kept up a steady
flow of reports on environmental data and the progress of the preparations. It
was not an easy job since the long time-lag transmissions meant that she had to
receive and often answer to comments relayed from Earth through the satellite
above Houston. She had to keep in mind what she had said earlier.
The whole world was listening at this moment; it would be doing so at
every opportunity. The operation should go smoothly because of their many
hours of practice landing on the Moon. But there was always the possibility of
electromechanical malfunction.
Finally, Orme and Bronski slid through the hatch into the lander, the
Barsoom. The head of IASA had been a reader of Edgar Rice Burroughs in his
childhood. His name was John Carter, the same as the hero of Burroughs's
earlier books about Mars, known as Barsoom by its fictional natives. Carter had
first proposed the name and had made the necessary political manipulations to
get it accepted. Those who had wanted to name the lander Tau Omega, after the
two characters on the tunnel door, had lost in the voting by a narrow margin.
After half an hour of rechecking, Orme gave the order for launching. The
Barsoom departed slowly from the mother ship under a weak jet pulse. Orme felt
a warm spot over his navel, as if that psychic umbilical cord attaching him to the
mother planet had been severed. But there was no time for any introspection. His
mind had to be focused on the objective, the position of the lander in relation to
the landing surface, and the constant inflow of flight data. He had to be a
machine without flaw; the awe and wonder during descent and the ecstasy of
accomplishment could come after the touchdown on Mars. If, that is, there were
no immediate problems.
The crew had practised landings on Earth in a much more powerful
machine which could handle the heavy gravity and thick atmosphere. It had also
practised on the Moon, where the gravitational pull was much weaker than that of
Earth's and the atmosphere was practically nil. But the atmosphere here, though
relatively tenuous, was still a considerable factor. However, the theory of a
Martian landing had been worked out and the crew had drilled so many times
under simulated conditions that the reality should be no problem.
For four days the crew of the Aries had waited for the winds to die down.
Now, finally, the high ice clouds and the lower dust clouds were subsiding. Only a
few thin cirri floated along below them, and the surface atmosphere should not
present difficulties.
The red orb expanded swiftly. The top of Olympus Mons, a volcano as
wide as the state of New Mexico and 15.5 miles high, sank out of sight. The
Tharsis ridge, looking like a colossal dinosaur with fleshy dorsal plates, widened
and then dropped out of sight. The Tithonius Chasma, more than 46 miles wide
and several miles deep, part of the Vallis Marineris canyon complex, broadened.
For twenty seconds, whiteness surrounded them as they passed through
a long, narrow and deep cloud of ice. To the east lay a shadow, night on Mars,
advancing at almost the rate it did on Earth. It was the bow which shot darkness
and a terrible cold over the wastelands. Not that it was warm on the surface.