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

the air smelled like.
"Shit," said Tally. "Anyway, you and Tinkerman about done gawking the scenery?
We got a murder to solve. Two murders."
"They've been dead for well over a year," Leah said. "They can wait another day.
God, isn't this place magnificent?"
"Stinks," said Tally.
#
The lander was bulbous and squat, painted a pale green, with the name Albert
Alligator in cursive script next to the airlock door. Leah and I cycled through
the airlock together. Langevin, the pilot who had shuttled us down, was waiting
for us in the suiting atrium when the inner lock opened. He opened his mouth to
say something, and then abruptly shut it, gagged, and turned away, his hand
going up to cover his mouth and nose. He scrambled out of the atrium abruptly. I
looked at Leah. She shrugged, and reached up to unfasten the strap of the
rebreather from behind her head.
"Let me get that," I said, and she turned around and bent her neck. Any excuse
to touch her. Behind me, I could hear Tally cycling through the lock. The strap
unfastened, and I gently took a finger and ran it along Leah's cheek, breaking
the seal of the rebreather to the skin.
Suddenly she broke away from me. "Oh, god!"
"What?"
"Take off your rebreather."
Puzzled, I reached up, snapped the strap free, and pulled it forward over my
head. The silicone made a soft "poik!" as the seal popped loose. I took a
breath, and gagged on the sudden odor.
The smell was as if I'd been wading through a cesspool in the middle of a very
rotten garbage dump. I looked down. My shoes were covered in brown. My hands
were brown. One leg, where I'd knelt on the ground, had a brown spot on the
knee. Leah was even dirtier.
Shit.
Tally popped through the lock, accompanied by a fresh burst of fecal odor. I
held my nose and suppressed my instinct to gag.
"Of course," said Leah. "Anaerobic bacteria." She thought for a second. "We're
going to have to find some boots, and maybe overalls. Leave them outside when we
come in."
I started to giggle.
"What's so goddam funny?" Tally said.
"I've decided you're right," I told her. "Mars stinks. Take off your rebreather.
You'll see."
#
The utility landing platform was a hexagonal truss plate with small rocket
engines mounted on three of the six corners. The hab-and-lab module that
Spacewatch was delivering for our stay was strapped on the top. It hovered in
the cloudy sky like a flying waffle-iron. Langevin guided it in by remote
control, setting it down in the sandy valley a hundred meters from the ruins of
the earlier habitat. His landing was as neat and as unconcerned as a man passing
a plate of potatoes. Still operating by remote control, he unstowed the power
crane, lifted the habitat off of the landing platform and lowered it gently to
the ground. The habitat itself was an unpainted aluminum cylinder, fixed with
brackets onto a platform with an electromechanical jack at each corner to level