"Kay Kenyon - Maximum Ice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kenyon Kay)

Finally, she managed to say, "What happened?"

"We don't know."

"Is it an ice age?"

"No. It'sтАж not water. Not ice. We don't know what it is."

"But it's home," she whispered.

Anatolly allowed his despair to seep out. "Is it?"

" 'Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.'" Zoya knew her
poetry, and she some-times used it to her advantage.
"But they don't have to, Zoyechka. We've been gone ten thousand years, in their time, as they measure
it." He didn't presume upon a warm welcome from earth. The People of the Road had never had a glad
welcome from earth's people. So they would make no assumptions about being taken inтАФespe-cially
given their state of ignorance about this new earth. Not even the orbiting satellites could enlighten them.
They had captured a half dozen of them and downloaded their data. Only there wasn't any. The satellite
data-storage units con-tained only noise.

The science team hadn't slept since Ship arrived in orbit. Spectography, electron diffraction, all their
analytical tools probed and pried at answers. There were a few discoveries. A huge and fluctuating
electromagnetic signature came from the surface. Average temperatures were cool, but not cold. The
chemical composition of the new landforms was famil-iarтАФyet anomalous. To learn more, they must go
down to the surface.

Zoya was so quiet, just staring. Her thoughts were likely what his own had been when he first saw the
altered earth: What calamity had befallen their home world? What remained of life and land?

There was a stirring behind them. People had started to trickle into the room from the corridor. Anatolly
could see a crowd assembled there.

Zoya took a very deep breath, as though testing her lungs for what they could hold, then exhaled. She
composed her ex-pression and turned from the porthole. He marveled at her composure, her courage.
No, that wasn't it. It was her faithтАФ that they would go on. He saw it in her eyes, the lift of her chin. The
others saw it too, and crowded into the room to be near her.

Anatolly had ordered everyone to stay away, to give Ship Mother a decent interval to wake up. But
ordering the Rom, of course, was often a hopeless enterprise. Here was Sava Uril, pushing forward,
grasping Zoya's hand. And Rebeka Havislov, Jozsef Mirran, Sandor Laslo, Anna Mijanovitch, Viktor
Novic, and others, gathering around her.

She gazed at them, looking at each person in turn. What-ever generational features she recognized, it
must have wanned her heart, for she smiled, a broad smile of pleasure.

One of the men came forward with a single red rose, in the traditional greeting that normally would have
come from a child. Her hand shook as she accepted it. By her glance around the room* she had just
noticed there were no youngsters pres-ent. She caught Anatolly's eyeтАФbut that story could wait.