"Robert A Heinlein - Red Planet v1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

"Don't put it on," advised MacRae. "It's too chilly out.
We'll go through the tunnels."

"It's twice as far," objected Jim.

"We'll leave it up to Willis. Willis, how do you vote?"

"Warm," said Willis smugly.


CHAPTER TWO

South Colony, Mars

SOUTH COLONY WAS arranged like a wheel. The admin-
istration building was the hub; tunnels ran out in all directions
and buildings were placed over them. A rim tunnel had been
started to join the spokes at the edge of the wheel; thus far a
forty-five degree arc had been completed.

Save for three Moon huts erected when the colony was
founded and since abandoned, all the buildings were shaped
alike. Each was a hemispherical bubble of silicone plastic,
processed from the soil of Mars and blown on the spot. Each
was a double bubble, in fact; first one large bubble would be
blown, say thirty or forty feet across; when it had hardened,
the new building would be entered through the tunnel and an
inner bubble, slightly smaller than the first, would be blown.
The outer bubble, "polymerized"-that is to say, cured and
hardened, under the rays of the sun; a battery of ultra-violet
and heat lamps cured the inner. The walls were separated by a
foot of dead air space, which provided insulation against the
bitter sub-zero nights of Mars.

When a new building had hardened a door would be cut to
the outside and a pressure lock installed; the colonials main-
tained about two-thirds Earth-normal pressure indoors for
comfort and the pressure on Mars is never as much as half of
that. A visitor from Earth, not conditioned to the planet, will
die without a respirator. Among the colonists only Tibetans
and Bolivian Indians will venture outdoors without respirators
and even they will wear the snug elastic Mars suits to avoid
skin hemorrhages.

Buildings had not even view windows, any more than a
modem building in New York has. The surrounding desert,
while beautiful, is monotonous. South Colony was in an area
granted by the Martians, just north of the ancient city of
Charax-there is no need to give the Martian name since an
Earthman can't pronounce it-and between the legs of the