"Geoffrey A. Landis - Elemental (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Landis Geoffrey A)

ocean floor in a burst of flame and soot in the summer of 2053.
Its arrival had been predicted well in advance; and it was not expected to
stop erupting until well after 2100. The failure of the tiny volcano was an
unexpected surprise.
Of course, the geologists were looking for the problem on the wrong side of
the world entirely, but that was not at all obvious. Not yet.
Susan arrived in Naples tired, but too excited to sleep. The Venus ship left
the next morning from the Napoli spaceport. The NSF had provided a room at the
spaceport Hilton for the night. She tried to read, but somehow couldn't
concentrate on the screen. She found a sliding door opening onto a tiny
balcony and went outside.
Looming out of the cloudy night was the immense bulk of the mountain Vesuvius.
The European spaceport had been built practically atop it, she recalled,
because the presence of the volcano made the spot a thaumaturgical nexus. This
made it easier to control the fire-elemental spells used to boost spacecraft.
The volcano would also make this a dandy place to invoke the earth elemental,
she thought. But dangerous. She remembered how she had told Ramsey about the
indiscriminate use of magic. Should she call him? What could she possibly say
to him, after last night?
Instead she undressed and went to bed, dreaming inchoate fantasies about earth
and fire, volcanoes, spaceships, and pentacles.
She was awakened at ten by a call from the spaceport. Her Venus flight had
been postponed a day due to some unspecified problem with the launch
system. They were terribly sorry. (n the interim, her hotel room and meals
would be paid by the space line, and if she chose to amuse herself by taking
any of the many tours and day-trips offered by the hotel-she thanked them and
hung up.
She did not care to amuse herself with tours and excursions, but found she
couldn't get back to sleep. She thought about calling Ramsey. Instead she
called Kirschmeyer's office. He wasn't in. What time was it back in Chicago,
anyway? Oh . . . five A.M. No wonder nobody was there.
She ended up spending the day lounging around the hotel pool, sunbathing and
organizing her notes on Earth elemental, working out some ideas to put into
action when she got to Venus.
At five in the evening she got another call from the spaceport. The Venus
flight was postponed again . . . she'd half. expected it. She went over to the
tours desk to look for a tour to the Vesuvius crater. None on Saturday. Since
she couldn't see Vesuvius itself, she settled on a tour to see the cities it
had buried, Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Without thinking about what she was doing she punched out Ramsey's number. She
held her breath as she waited for an answer. When there was no answer after
fifteen rings, she didn't know whether to be relieved or annoyed. Kirschmeyer
wasn't in either. She left a message with the prof's computer telling that the
flight had been delayed, then went back to the pool and read the brochures on
Vesuvius.
Although technically dormant rather than extinct, she read, geologists had
determined that the volcano would not
be likely to be active for several centuries at the very least. In the
meantime, tourists climbed its slopes and marveled at the occasional puffs of
steam emitted from crevices in the crater, while below, farmers grew olives