"Zach Hughes - Deep Freeze" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Zach)

back down the long line of beacons to X&A Headquarters on Xanthos. The
temporary beacons left behind by Old Folks to guide them back to the
beaten path could not handle blink messages.

With everything in readiness, Dan took one last look at the second
planet. He set the computer to work confirming her distance from her sun
and the strength of the star's radiations. He was not an astrophysicist, but
he had a gut feeling that something was wrong with the figures. The
second planet was roughly the same size as Tigian II. She was at an
optimum distance from her sun. There were no dark and brooding clouds
to shield her from the sun's life-giving emanations. When the computer
confirmed once more that by all rights the water that was locked up in the
vast fields of ice should have been liquid, Dan took Old Folks down toward
the glittering surface for a closer look.

Fran watched nervously as the squarish Mule lowered until she was
moving over the surface at a rate of speed that made her motion quite
apparent. In open space one never realized that the ship was moving so
fast.

"What are you doing, Papa?" she asked nervously.

"Just having a look."
 He had all of the ship's sensors at work. A long, rounded ridge of ice
was a range of impressive mountains. Lower, flatter areas made Dan
wonder if once there had been oceans on Fran's World. He let the little
ship zip around the planet in an orbit that eventually covered all of the
surface. There were no spectacular readings, nothing to cause the systems
to shout "Eureka!" with buzzers and flashing lights, but when Dan studied
the readings after moving the ship into a higher, stable orbit he whistled.

"Have a look at this, Mama," he said.

"I see it," Fran said. "But what is it?" She was unable to make anything
of the charted readings.

"Metals," Dan said. "Concentrations of them here and here." He
pointed to two spots on the featureless globe. "Other places, too. This
might be quite something, Mama. How'd you like to be very, very rich?"

"I would rather have been very, very rich when we were young," she said
with a smile.

"But you wouldn't object to being rich now, I take it."

"Not too much."

Dan began to give the computer orders.

"You're not going down?" Fran asked in alarm.