"Steven Gould - Rory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gould Stephen Jay)

and zoomed down the next passge, often not touching a wall until the next
intersection.
Anton gradually got the hang of it. Before long, he was jumping as far as
Rory. And a few times he actually stayed clear of the walls. But he was
slowed by sightseeing. They passed open doors with people working over
equipment strange to him, or closed doors with intriguing labels like
Astrophysics, Agronomy, Plant Physiology, Astronomy, Electronics,
Metallurgy, Project SETI, Waste Reclamation, and Radiation Safety.
At regular intervals the windows looked out at other parts of the station
(a bewildering construct of struts, tubular passages, and spherical
chambers) and the small asteroid known as Lucy to which the station was
tethered. Anton also knew that if he looked in the correct direction, he
could see the faint disk of Ceres, fifteen thousand kilometers away; and
sometimes a bright flash of light as the sun caught the Ceres colony's
surface installations just right, thirty-two hours away by shuttle.
"Here we are," announced Rory as they came to yet another junction
with passages going right, up, left, down, and straight ahead. Each of the
passages was marked with a letter. "G" was the one to Anton's right. Rory
ducked into that passage. Anton followed. The passage ended with another
doorway, pressure door pinned back on sprung hinges, ready to snap shut
from any drop of pressure outside the pod. Another identical door was in
the passage, ready for any pressure drop inside the pod.
Anton hoped he'd be on the correct side, if that ever happened.
The passage opened onto a spherical lounge perhaps seven meters in
diameter. Twelve hexagonal doors, equally spaced, were set into the
carpeted surface of the room. They were labeled one through twelve in
white numerals, contrasting with the blue curving walls and green doors.
Anton had seen it briefly when he'd left his bags earlier, but the maze of
station passageways had left him lost moments after leaving.
"Thank you, Rory," he said.
Rory grinned. "You're welcome." He bounced over to number seven and
nulled the door open. "Wanna see Geary? He's my best friend."
Anton pushed off and came to a successful stop at the edge of Rory's
doorway. Like all the cabins, Rory's had a half-meter-square window
looking out on space. A ventilator outlet opened on one side of the room
and an intake grille was on the other. A storage unit was mounted on one
of the six side walls, and belongings were attached to other walls with
Velcro fasteners.
"See, he's also special."
Anton pulled himself into the room. As he got closer, he saw a sphere
made of wire mesh mounted rigidly before the ventilator intake. Bits of
vegetable debris clung to the side of the sphere closest to the inlet. Then he
saw the rodent floating in the sphere and looking back at him with black,
beady eyes.
 "This is Geary. He's sort of a Mongoloid, too."
"What do you mean, Rory?"
"He's a Mongolian gerbil."
Anton nodded. He'd seen the animals used in laboratories on Earth.
They were extremely adaptable to temperature extremes, even if they
tended to look more like rats than gerbils.