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

"whump" as the pressure door at the entrance to C-pod slammed shut on
its rubber gasket.
"Rory!" Ruth McMillian shouted distantly. He scrambled for the door in
the dark, found it. and shoved it open.
A lone emergency light mounted by the pod exit dimly lit the lounge.
Anton saw Dr. McMillian tug at the door to Rory's room. It flipped open
and Rory came sailing out. She grabbed him and ran fingers down his
sides. "Are you all right?"
"Sure," he smiled. His nose was bleeding. "Just couldn't find the door
latch. Blowout?"
There was a muffled screaming from Dr. Peterson's door. "Let me out!
Let me out!"
Anton kicked his way over there and flipped the latch. Stan Peterson
erupted into the lounge, clawing wildly with his hands at the edge of the
door. Large areas of white showed in his eyes and he was visibly sweating.
"Ohmigod, ohmigod." He clutched his head in his hands and moaned.
"Claustrophobe," said a voice behind them. Kim Cowlander was pulling
herself out of her room when Anton turned to look. She was still zipping
up a sleeveless coverall as she floated out into the lounge. "What the shit
happened?"
Dr. McMillian shrugged. Anton said, "The shuttle from Ceres blew up. It
took the docking pod with it. The last I saw before we got hit was the
number two shuttle zipping past my window. I think it hit the
passageway."
"No shit, Sherlock," saidKim. "Let's see if we can see the extent of the
damage." She shoved past the still moaning Peterson, ignoring him, and
made her way to the passage door. Anton and Ruth McMillian followed.
 "Holy shit," Kim said when she'd looked through the small port in the
center of the door.
"You have a preoccupation with fecal matter, Kim?" said Anton, as he
pressed forward to look past her shoulder. His eyes widened when he saw.
"I take it back."
The shuttle had done more than damage the passagewayтАФit had
sheared it cleanly away. When Anton looked out the port he saw the
station framed by a jagged and torn passagewayтАФa lot of the station, and
more every second. It was receding from them at a visible rate, and
nothing connected them to it.
"Well, thank God the cutoffs worked," said Kim, "or we'd be trying to
breathe thinner stuff than this. You can see where the power line tore, and
there's the sewage and air lines. I don't see the water pipeтАФit must have
torn closer to the hull." She was pointing through the little window.
"We'll just have to wait for one of the shuttles to come get us," said
Ruth.
"Uh, I don't think that's going to happen," said Anton. "The last I saw of
the number one shuttle it was traveling in-system looking like a cracked
teapot, and it was shuttle number two that went through the passageway.
I'd be willing to wager it didn't hang around afterward. And even if it did,
I'll bet it isn't serviceable."
"Not to worry," said Kim to Ruth. "In a suit I could jump the distance
with a line. They'll send someone after us with an EVA pack and a fishing