"Forward, Robert L - Rocheworld 02 - Return to Rocheworld - with Julie Forward Fuller 5.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Forward Robert L)

"Eleven minutes," interrupted the distinctive voice of the airplane's semi-intelligent computer, Jill. "Get into the airlock, Richard," it bossed. Richard obeyed the computer and trotted to the rear of the plane and the lock door closed behind him. George and Arielle were left with the hiss of air passing over the silent airplane and the distant throb of air-lock pumps going through their motions on almost non-existent air. George could now see the rocket lander, sticking up forty-five meters into the air, its dark outline just to one side of the setting globe of Barnard.
"Bad luck," complained George. "We're flying right into the sun.
"No! It's good!" said Arielle. "I can now see rocks easy because of their big shadow." She banked the plane slightly to pick a path that was relatively clear of boulders and gave up the last of her altitude for speed.
"BRACE YOURSELF!" screamed Jill to everyone but Arielle through their suit imps. Arielle pulled the plane up into a stall.
"Flaps!" she commanded, both her hands busy, one with the airplane controls and the other operating the fans at full reverse thrust. George pushed at the flap controls but found that they were already moving.
"Flaps, down," he and Jill said at the same time. The plane started to drop heavily to the surface, but Arielle dipped it just enough to bring it under control again, the forward speed almost gone, and slid the plane through the sand directly at the lander.
_We're going to hit!_ thought George, his voice too tight to speak.
Arielle wrenched the rudder around at the same time as she twisted the fan controls. The _Magic Dragonfly_ went into a broadside slide and came to a stop with its nose on one side of the lander and the left wing on the other, not ten meters from the legs of the lander.
"I made ringer, George!" shouted Arielle with delight.
"BLOW THE HATCH!" came Jill's sharp command in George's ear. His thumb flipped up the safety cover, but his suit imp, running rapidly down his arm, beat his gloved finger to the switch. There was a loud BANG! and the cockpit windows flew into the air. The ammonia-methane atmosphere rushed into the plane and there was a dull THUMP! as the inflowing gasses burned with the residual air in the plane. George clambered out on the nose and jumped to the surface, then turned to catch Arielle. Together they hurried toward the distant lander. Jill, her voice turned into that of a martinet, drove them with verbal whiplashes broadcast through their personal imps.
SHIRLEY, RICHARD, KATRINA, DAVID -- TO THE WINCH.
GEORGE, ARIELLE -- UP THE LADDER.
RED, START THE WINCH AND GET THEM UP AND IN!
MOVE IT GEORGE!
ARIELLE IS WAY AHEAD OF YOU!
MOVE IT, YOU FAT OLD MAN!"
George found another source of adrenaline in his anger and he sprinted harder for the ladder. Arielle ran lightly up the rungs on the landing legs without using her hands, then when she reached the main body of the lander, crouched and leaped up the side of the rocket in the low gravity, then continued on, hand-over-hand, her legs dangling. George knew he couldn't do that, and scrambled after her. He got up the landing leg and paused to look up at Arielle.
NO SIGHTSEEING! MOVE IT! MOVE IT!!! MOVE IT!!!
Jill's voice took on a harsh tone that sent George back to his first week in ROTC summer camp under the tender ministrations of a drill instructor. Fear and hatred drove him up the ladder. He could see the wall of water coming over the horizon to his left, its foaming top colored blood-red in the setting sunlight. The water was swallowing the kilometers long shadow of the lander as George clambered into the airlock filled with Red Vengeance and the five others from the airplane.
"I've got the winch stored," said Red. "Shut the outer door."
George was nearest the door and started to close it. He stopped. With him in the lock, there was no room for the door to close, and no time left to cycle the lock. He stepped back out onto the top rung of the ladder.
"George!!!" shouted Red, as George pulled the door shut behind him. "Nooooo..." she wailed as he pushed the door lever over and locked himself outside.
"Take off, Thomas!!! That's an order!" said George through his imp.
The ten-meter-high wall of water hit the base of the rocket and it started to tip.
"Got to go!" said Thomas.
The atmosphere around George was ablaze with flame as the ascent module stage lifted from the top of the falling rocket and boosted into the sky. George's feet slipped from the rung and he was left hanging by the inadequate grasp of his sausage-fingered gloves. As the acceleration built up he found his left hand slipping from the vertical handhold. He grabbed for the horizontal ladder rung and got it, but that cost him his right handhold on the door lever. Dangling by one hand from the bottom of the accelerating spacecraft, he was blinded, deafened, and burned by the exhaust from the powerful rocket engine. He felt the suit cooling shift to maximum power to prevent his legs from frying in the intense heat. He tried to get his right hand up to the ladder rung, but couldn't do it. They hit max-Q and the supersonic blast was finally too much. His fingers slipped off the rung and he fell through the flaming exhaust toward the distant ground below. He was still moving upward, coasting on the momentum of the rocket that had left him behind. He came to the peak of his trajectory and started to fall.
Time seemed to stop. George found that he had automatically assumed the spread-eagle position he'd learned when skydiving, only this time he didn't have a parachute. He felt a faint twinge of regret. Regret that he would never again see Jinjur and Red and the others again. George felt cheated. There was so much more he wanted to do on this world. There was so much more to be learned from the superintelligent alien flouwen they had found in the oceans of Eau. Then there were all the moons of Gargantua to explore. Well ... he had made it to Barnard alive and had fun exploring at least one world.
_We all have to go sometime_, he said to himself. _Might as well get this over with_. He pulled in his arms from the spread-eagle position and dove headfirst for the ground.
"NO! GEORGE! NO!" screamed Red's voice over his suit imp.
George rapidly resumed the spread-eagle position and looked around. The ascent module had turned in a big circle and was now rising up from underneath to meet him! As it came closer he could see Thomas St. Thomas's grinning brown face peering up at him through the triangular docking windows in the cockpit deck. The entry port at the top of the spacecraft was open. Reaching up from the lock was a slender, space-suited figure. She had a long lanyard, but it wasn't needed. Thomas swooped the rocket up underneath George and scooped him right into Red's arms.
"I always was the best one on the block at the ball-and-cup game," Thomas bragged.
George felt the acceleration increase as Red dragged him into the lock and the air cycle started.
"I nearly lost you!" said Red as she took off his helmet. Tears were streaming down her face and into her suit. George started to cry too. He put his arms around her and tried to give her a comforting hug, but the suits got in the way. When Sam Houston got the inner airlock door open he found them nuzzling each other's faces, both wet with tears.
With his suit off and holding Red by the hand, George joined the rest of the crew in the view lounge as they floated at the L-4 point of the rotating double-planet, waiting for _Prometheus_ to arrive. Arielle was at the telescope, tracking the fractured cross of duralloy that used to be the _Magic Dragonfly_ as it was being borne off by the waves, the wing tips crumbling as they were dashed against boulders and tumbling rocks.
"Goodby, Jill," she cried, her voice breaking.
"Arielle, dear," said Jill's voice through her imp. "I'm still here. You must remember that these voices we computers use are just to aid you in identifying which computer is talking to you."
As it spoke, the voice changed slowly from the overtones of Jill to the overtones of Jack, the voice persona for the rocket lander. It then switched to that of James, the main computer on their lightcraft Prometheus, who in his most butlerish voice continued to drive in the lesson as its voice changed to that of a tinny robot. "It is very important that you realize that we are noth-ing but ro-bots."
"You right," agreed Arielle. "I am silly to cry over computers." Then she burst into tears again.
"What's the matter now, Arielle?" said George.
"My _Dragonfly_ was such a pretty plane, and now she is all broke!"
"We've got three more dragonflies for you," said George reassuringly. "And you have all the rest of your life to fly in them."
"Here comes _Prometheus_ to pick us up," said Sam, peering out the side of the viewport window as the lightcraft pilot Tony Roma manipulated the three hundred kilometer diameter lightsail in the weak red photon wind of Barnard. The lightcraft had sailed from the solar system to Barnard at twenty percent of the speed of light, pushed by a powerful beam of laser light. Here in the Barnard planetary system, however, the lightsail was limited to much lower velocities by the weak light flux from the small red star.
Hanging from the center of the aluminum foil moon was their home away from home -- a sixty-six meter high, twenty meter diameter combination hotel and office building, complete with parking garage. At one end were five decks for working and living, at the other end were two decks for storage and engineering, and in the middle was the docking area for four large rocket landers, nestled upside-down around a central shaft. There was a gap that had previously held the lander they had used to visit Rocheworld. Three landers still remained.
"C'mon, Red," said Thomas. "Time to fly what's left of this lander back to its dock."
The rockets on the ascent propulsion stage brightened again as it moved off to join up with the approaching sailcraft and unite the ten explorers with the nine fellow crewmembers they had left behind in space.
*Look!!!* hollered Roaring*Hot*Vermillion.
^Where?^ replied Clear^White^Whistle, searching the ocean around it with sonar pings generated by its multiton fluid body. ^I see nothing.^
*I didn't say 'see'! I said 'look'! Up in the nothing near SkyRock!*
Clear^White^Whistle quickly formed an eye out of its amorphous jelly-like body and used the eye to look upward into the waterless void above the ocean, where its sonar was useless for seeing things. It adjusted the shape of the gelatine sphere into a crude lens until the heavens blossomed with hundreds of tiny pinpoints of light. There was a new light in the sky. It varied rapidly in brightness and moved away from the Hot-limed side of the rocky planetoid above them toward an approaching moon-sized silver ellipse.
^It is the rocket of the humans. They are leaving SkyRock to return to their circle in the sky that flies in the light of Hot.^