"Edward L. Ferman - Best From F&SF, 23rd Edition" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ferman Edward L)

 "Have you ever heard of Apollo 13?"
He smiled at her. "Special circumstances. Short-term problems."
"You're right, of course. And in the only two other real space emergencies since that time, all hands
were lost." She turned and scowled at each of them in turn.
"But we're -not going to lose." She dared any of them to disagree, and no one was about to. She
relaxed and resumed her stroll around the room. She turned to Crawford again.
"I can see I'll be drawing on your knowledge a lot in the years to come. What do you see as the next
order of business?"
Crawford relaxed. The awful burden of responsibility, which he had never wanted, was gone. He
was content to follow her lead.
"To tell you the truth, I was wondering what to say next. We have to make a thorough inventory. I
guess we should start on that."
"That's fine, but there is an even more important order of business. We have to go out to the dome
and find out what the hell caused the blowout. The damn thing should not have blown; it's the first of its
type to do so. And from the bottom. But it did blow, and we should know why, or we're ignoring a fact
about Mars that might still kill us. Let's do that first. Ralston, can you walk?"
When he nodded, she sealed her helmet and started into the lock. She turned and looked
speculatively at Crawford.
"I swear, man, if you had touched me with a cattle prod you couldn't have got a bigger rise out of me
than you did with what you said a few minutes ago. Do I dare ask?"
Crawford was not about to answer. He said, with a perfectly straight face, "Me? Maybe you should
just assume I'm a chauvinist."
"We'll see, won't we?"
"What is that stuff?"
Song Sue Lee was on her knees, examining one of the hundreds of short, stiff spikes extruding from
the ground. She tried to scratch her head but was frustrated by her helmet.
"It looks like plastic. But I have a strong feeling it's the higher life-form Lucy and I were looking for
yesterday."
"And you're telling me those little spikes are what poked holes in the dome bottom? I'm not buying
that."
Song straightened up, moving stiffly. They had all worked hard to empty out the collapsed dome and
peel back the whole, bulky mess to reveal the ground it had covered. She was tired and stepped out of
character for a moment to snap at Mary Lang.
"I didn't tell you that. We pulled the dome back and found spikes. It was your inference that they
poked holes in the bottom."
"I'm sorry," Lang said quietly. "Go on with what you were saying."
"Well," Song admitted, "it wasn't a bad inference, at that. But the holes I saw were not punched
through. They were eaten away." She waited for Lang to protest that the dome bottom was about as
chemically inert as any plastic yet devised. But Lang had learned her lesson. And she had a talent for
facing facts.
"So. We have a thing here that eats plastic. And seems to be made of plastic, into the bargain. Any
ideas why it picked this particular spot to grow, and no other?"
"I have an idea on that," McKillian said. 'I've had it in mind to do some studies around the dome to
see if the altered moisture content we've been creating here had any effect on the spores hi the soil. See,
we've been here nine days, spouting out water vapor, carbon dioxide, and quite a bit of oxygen into the
atmosphere. Not much, but maybe more than it seems, considering the low concentrations that are
naturally available. We've altered the biome. Does anyone know where the exhaust air from the dome
was expelled?"
Lang raised her eyebrows. "Yes, it was under the dome. The air we exhausted was warm, you see,
and it was thought it could be put to use one last time before we let it go, to warm the floor of the dome