"David Grinnell- To Venus! To Venus!" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grinnell David)

Swiftly, Chet replaced the floorplate and plugged his suit into the
moonwalker's system. Jim remained in his seat but plugged himself into
the same system.

"Moonwalker to Orbiter." Chet had switched to the correct frequency
and placed the call. The answer came immediately.

"Orbiter. Gotcha. Go ahead."

"This is Chet. Moonwalker's operational. Shall I proceed to the bug?"

"Right. How long do you expect it to take you?"

"I'm going to take the easy way around, even though it will take me a
little longer. I should be there in about three and a half hours. Figure time
to transfer. We should be in a position to lift off in four and a half hours
from now. How does that fit in?"

As Chet talked, he pulled a set of charts from their nesting place and
spread one of them on the table in front of him. The orbiting mother ship
would be feeding the information he had relayed into their computer in
order to determine how soon, after three and a half hours, they would be
in a position to rendezvous. This gave Chet just enough time to
double-check his route and confirm his time estimates.

"Okay, Chet, we'll take you off in four hours, seventeen and
three-quarter minutes; that will be 15:20:22 Washington Mean Time. Do
you want a time check?"

Chet immediately punched the button at the bottom of the clock
located on the instrument panel. This allowed it to be electronically
checked and corrected by Orbiter. Now it was simply a matter of keeping
to his schedule. Perhaps "simply" was the wrong word. A thousand things
could go wrong. Navigating the lumbering moonwalker was in itself a job
which could be rated a solid day's work.

If everything went well, they should reach the bug in plenty of time to
button up the walker, deactivating it and transferring its delicate
instrumentation to the vehicle which would take them to the mother ship.
The walker would be left behind to await the arrival of the next team.
Then there would be the activating of the bug, the correct setting of the
telemetry and guidance equipment and a serene wait to be lifted off and
picked up by the mother ship. That was all there was to it, if everything
went well. Chet realized, of course, that the reason he and Jim, two human
beings, were involved at all was because when things did not go entirely as
planned, there was no machinery which could match the brain.


The bug hove into view with time to spare. Chet maneuvered the walker
close in, tucking it under an overhanging promontory as protection