"Michael Flynn - Wreck of The Rivers of Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flynn Michael)

Satterwaithe, whohad questioned his authority, said nothing. She imagined that GorgasтАЩs ambition
mirrored her own. She was the sort of person who, like God, creates others in her own image and, when
they fail to behave as the image ought, labels them disingenuous.

The Engineer


file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/WreckofTheRiversofStars,The.html (25 of 424)5-9-2007 13:26:52
 TheWreckofTheRiverofStars

The openness, the abandon, the sheer forever of space both terrified and seduced Ramakrishnan
Bhatterji. While he contemplated the upcoming EVAsion; while he suited up; while Miko, like a
knightтАЩs squire, tested his valves and fittings; while he waited patiently in the afterlock for the pressure
to drop to the ambient of space, Bhatterji trembledтАФin his limbs, in his guts, in his heartтАФbut whether
they were tremblors of eagerness or of fear he did not know.

For, when he stepped outside and planted his boots on the shipтАЩs skin, an exhilaration ran through him
like an electric current and he became more heightened in all his sensesтАФas if he could hear the
grinding of the crystal spheres or smell the sharp tang of the aether. It always puzzled him afterwards
that this euphoria faded so rapidly while the fear remained to haunt his dreams; as if joy were a tide,
which, at its ebb, leaves exposed the jagged rocks.

The engine cages, along with most other equipments, were mounted around the rim, one engine in each
quadrant. They loomed above their surroundings like the sacred monuments of a lost race. Around each,
a bare space had been left out of reverence, if not for their monumental nature, then for the fusion
plasma that pulsed from them when they spoke GodтАЩs name. When he reached Number Three, Bhatterji
did not bother to inspect the projectors that knelt like acolytes around it, nor even the focusing rings that
directed the plasma in the desired direction. He examined first where he thought the trouble would lie
and gave a small grunt of dismal satisfaction on finding his intuition vindicated.

The inner spherical grid, the anode, had melted. In place of gracile, superconducting geodesics, he found
a ragged and warped tangle. In melting, the hoops had begun to sublime but had quickly frozen in the
ambient of space, and they looked now as if they had been drawn in India ink and smudged by GodтАЩs
careless thumb. Filigrees of metaloceramic curled where the radiating vapors had cooled. They were
beautiful, like iron ferns. Bhatterji broke off a lacey branch with the thumb of his gauntlet. Brittle. The
entire anode grid was a useless, blackened mass.

тАЬThat looks bad,тАЭ MikoтАЩs voice told him. Everyone on the ship was watching through BhatterjiтАЩs suitтАЩs
cameras, but that did not inhibit the engineer as it might another. His life demanded an audience.

тАЬThe hobartium hoops have been thermally stressed,тАЭ he told his apprentice in a stroke of
understatement worthy of the Japanese paintings he favored.

тАЬCan we salvage the mass and redraw it to wire?тАЭ

Musing on the failure mode, Bhatterji shook his head, then remembered he was on radio. тАЬNo. An
overstress of this magnitude ruins the molecular alignment. The surface will have been hardened by the
vacuum quench and will not draw without severe cracking. Describe the failure mode to me.тАЭ Miko
must learn the craft, and the unexpected has always provided opportunities for learning.