"Geoffrey Landis - Ecopoiesis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Landis Geoffrey A)

Langevin had also mentioned that the rover had arrived, after a long slow
transit from the Moon. Did we still want it? Where should he set it down?
Oh, yes, we still wanted it.
#
"Time for a vacation!" Tally said, when the unpiloted utility lander had dropped
the rover off and I had checked out the systems and declared it fully
functional. The rover was the same awful shade of yellow-green as the lander had
been, a color chosen for maximum contrast against the browns and purples of
Mars. It had six webbed wheels mounted on a rocker-bogey suspension that would
give it incredible hill-climbing ability; I had little doubt that it would have
been able to crawl right over the hab-lab, if an incautious pilot had tested
poorly on navigation. I said as much to the team after the brief test drive.
"Are you seriously suggesting that the habitat was crushed by a rover?" Leah
said. "No tread marks were found on any of the pieces we found."
"A rover would have left tracks," Tally said. "Even after two years, we'd have
see them."
I shook my head. "No," I said. "I was just giving an example of how robust the
suspension is."
"I see."
"So," Tally said. "Time for a trip."
"A trip" Leah said. "Why not? Where did you want to go?"
"Why not go the beach?" Tally said. "Head north. See what a Mars ocean is like."

"Mmm," Leah said. "Not today. I'll still be busy tomorrow, too, I think. Maybe
the next day."
"Copacetic," said Tally. "I wouldn't mind a day to do some long-range recon with
the rover, anyway. That is, if Tink says it's checked out okay?"
"All systems in perfect shape," I said. "No reason for you not to drive around a
bit."
A lot of the work Leah asked me to do seemed to have nothing to do with the
investigation of the accident. She was conducting her own investigation, I
decided, a scientific investigation of the progress of terraforming-- no,
ecopoiesis-- on Mars. She had me decipher all the data I could out of the
opticals; data on bacteria counts and atmosphere, and checked it against the
measurements she could make herself. "Cripes, I wish I were a biologist," had
become her favorite phrase, muttered as she stared into the screen of a
microscope, counting bacteria, but she was clearly happy doing the work, and I
was happy to assist, to do anything that made Leah happy.
More methane in the atmosphere, she said, at a break. Some ethane, ethylene,
even acetylene. And quite a bit more oxygen than expected.
"Oxygen and methane? Isn't that explosive?"
"No, oxy is still way under one percent; all in all, it's still mostly a
reducing atmosphere. The hydrocarbons are all greenhouse gases."
"Gaia," I said, suddenly realizing what she was getting at.
"Gaia," she agreed, a soft smile creeping slowly across her face. The bacteria
were producing greenhouse gases, warming the planet up. Making it a better abode
for life.
#
I was getting bored with the claustrophobic spaces of the habitat, and the
sameness of the landscape, and I was sure that Leah and Tally were as well. We