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

"Those who lead, lead," he said, simply. "IтАЩll follow you as long as you keep leading,"
"As long as it's in the direction you want?" She laughed, and poked him in the ribs. "I see you as my
Grand Vizier, the man who holds the arcane knowledge and advises the regent. I think I'll have to watch
out for you. I know a little history, myself."
Crawford couldn't tell how serious she was. He shrugged it off.
"What I really wanted to talk to you about is this: You said you couldn't fly this ship. But you were
not yourself, you were depressed and feeling hopeless. Does that still stand?"
"It stands. Come on up and I'll show you why."
In the pilot's cabin, Crawford was ready to believe her. Like all flying machines since the days of the
windsock and open cockpit, this one was a mad confusion of dials, switches, and lights designed to awe
anyone who knew nothing about it. He sat in the copilot's chair and listened to her.
"We had a back-up pilot, of course. You may be surprised to learn that it wasn't me. It was Dorothy
Cantrell, and she's dead. Now I know what everything does on this board, and I can cope with most of it
easily. What I don't know, I could learn. Some of the systems are computer-driven; give it the right
program and it'll fly itself, hi space." She looked longingly at the controls, and Crawford realized that, like
Weinstein, she didn't relish giving up the fun of flying to boss a gang of explorers. She was a former test
pilot, and above all things she loved flying. She patted an array of hand controls on her right side. There
were more like them on the left.
"This is what would kill us, Crawford. What's your first name? Matt. Matt, this baby is a flyer for the
first forty thousand meters. It doesn't have the juice to orbit on the jets alone. The wings are folded up
now. You probably didn't see them on the way in, but you saw the models. They're very light,
supercritical, and designed for this atmosphere. Lou said it was like flying a bathtub, but it flew. And it's a
skill, almost an art. Lou practiced for three years on the best simulators we could build and still had to
rely on things you can't learn in a simulator. And he barely got us down in one piece. We didn't noise it
around, but it was a damn close thing. Lou was young; so was Cantrell. They were both fresh from flying.
They flew every day, they had the feel for it. They were tops." She slumped back into her chair. "I
haven't flown anything but trainers for eight years."
Crawford didn't know if he should let it drop.
"But you were one of the best, everyone knows that. You still don't think you could do it?"
She threw up her hands. "How can I make you understand? This is nothing like anything I've ever
flown. You might as well. . ." She groped for a comparison, trying to coax it out with gestures in the air.
"Listen. Does the fact that someone can fly a biplane, maybe even be the best goddamn biplane pilot that
ever was, does that mean they're qualified to fly a helicopter?"
"I don't know."
"It doesn't. Believe me."
"All right. But the fact remains that you're the closest thing on Mars to a pilot for the Podkayne. I
think you should consider that when you're deciding what we should do." He shut up, afraid to sound like
he was pushing her.
She narrowed her eyes and gazed at nothing.
"I have thought about it." She waited for a long time. "I think the chances are about a thousand to one
against us if I try to fly it. But IтАЩll do it, if we come to that. And that's your job. Showing me some better
odds. If you can't, let me know."
Three weeks later, the Tharsis Canyon had been transformed into a child's garden of toys. Crawford
had thought of no better way to describe it. Each of the plastic spikes had blossomed into a fanciful
windmill, no two of them just alike. There were tiny ones, with the vanes parallel to the ground and no
more than ten centimeters tall. There were derricks of spidery plastic struts that would not have looked
too out of place on a Kansas farm. Some of them were five meters high. They came in all colors and
many configurations, but all had vanes covered with a transparent film like cellophane, and all were
spinning into colorful blurs in the stiff Martian breeze. Crawford thought of an industrial park built by
gnomes. He could almost see them trudging through the spinning wheels.