"Paul J. McAuley - How we Lost the Moon - A True Story by Frank W. Allen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

wearing bright orange radiation-proof shrouds over our Moon suits, and
camera rigs on our shoulders so that the scientists could see what we saw.
The plant looked intact, burning salt-white in the glare of a lunar afternoon,
throwing a long black shadow toward us. The red-and-green perimeter
lights were on; the cooling sink, a bore-hole three kilometers deep, wasnтАЩt
venting. I drove the rover all the way around it, and then we went in.

The plant was essentially one big hall filled with the laser-pumping
assemblies, huge frames of parallel color-coded pipes each as big as one
of those old Saturn rockets and threaded through with bundles of heavy
cables and trackways for the robots which serviced them. We crept along
the tiled floor in their shadows like a pair of orange mice, directing our
camera rigs here and there at the request of the scientists. The emergency
lights were, still strobing, and I asked someone to switch them off, which
they did after only five minutesтАЩ discussion about whether it was a good
idea to disturb anything.

The six laser-focusing pipes, two meters in diameter, converged on
the bus-sized experimental chamber. Containment was a big problem; that
chamber was crammed with powerful magnetic tori which generated the
fields in which the target, a pellet of ultra-compressed metallic hydrogen,
was heated by chirped pulse amplification to ten billion degrees
Centigrade. It was surrounded by catwalks and hidden by the flared ends of
the focusing pipes, the capillary grid of the liquid sodium cooling system,
and a hundred different kinds of monitor. We checked the system
diagnostics of the monitors, which told us only that several detectors on the
underside had ceased to function, and then, harangued by scientists,
crawled all around the chamber as best we could, sweating heavily in our
suits and chafing our elbows and knees.

Mike found a clue to what had happened when he managed to wriggle
into the crawl space beneath the chamber, quite a feat in a pressurized suit.
He had taken off his camera rig to do it, and it took quite a bit of prompting
before he started to describe what he saw.

тАЬThereтАЩs a severed cable here, and something has punched a hole in
the box above it. Let me shift aroundтАжOkay, I can see a hole in the floor,
too. About two centimeters across. IтАЩm poking my screwdriver into it. Well,
it must go all the way through the tiles, I canтАЩt see how deep. Hey, Frank,
get me some of that wire, will you?тАЭ

There was a spool of copper cable nearby. I cut off a length and
passed it in.

тАЬYou two get on out of there now,тАЭ one of the scientists advised.

тАЬThis wonтАЩt take but a minute,тАЭ Mike said, and started humming
tunelessly, which meant that he was thinking hard about something.

I asked, because I knew he wouldnтАЩt say anything otherwise, тАЬWhat is