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

the Exawatt and were taking a few daysтАЩ R&R. IтАЩd found out about a gig
supervising the con-struction of a railway from the South Pole to the
permanent base at Clavius, but Mike wouldnтАЩt sign up and wouldnтАЩt say why,
except that it was to do with what had happened at the Exawatt.

WeтАЩd been exposed to a small amount of radiation when weтАЩd gone
into the plantтАФMike a little more than me тАФ and had spent a day being
checked out before getting back on the job. The scientists were all over the
plant by then. The reaction chamber had been dismantled by robots, and
we brought in all kinds of monitoring equipment. Not only radiation counters,
but a gravity measuring device and a neutrino detector. We helped bore a
shaft five hundred meters deep parallel to the hole punched through the
floor, and probes and motion sensors and cameras were lowered into it.

Mike claimed to have worked out what had happened as soon as he
stuck the wire in the hole through the foundation, but he wouldnтАЩt tell me.
тАЬYou should be able to guess from what they were trying to measure,тАЭ he
said, the one time I asked, and smiled when I called him a son of a bitch.
HeтАЩs very smart, but sort of fucked up in the head, antisocial, careless of his
appearance and untidy as hell, and proud that he has four of the five
symptoms of AspergerтАЩs Syndrome. But he was my partner, and I trusted
him; when he said it wasnтАЩt a good idea to take up a new contract, I nagged
him for a straight hour to explain why, and went along with him even though
he wouldnтАЩt. He was spending all his spare time making calculations on his
slate, and was still working on them at the South Pole facility.

I raised the subject again when news of the special presidential
announcement broke. тАЬYouтАЩd better tell me what you think happened,тАЭ I told
Mike, тАЬbecause IтАЩll hear the truth in less than an hour, and after that I wonтАЩt
believe you.тАЭ

We were in an arbor in the dome of the South Pole facility. Real
plants, cycads and banana plants and ferns, growing in real dirt around us,
sunlight pouring in at a low angle through the diamond panes high above.
The dome capped a small crater some three hundred meters across, on a
high ridge near the edge of the South Pole-Aitken Basin and in permanent
sunlight, the sun circling around the horizon once every twenty-eight days. It
was hot and humid, and the people splash-ing in the lake below our arbor
were making a lot of noise. The lake and its scattering of atolls took up
most of the craterтАЩs floor, with arbors and cafes and cabins on the bench
terrace around it. The water was billion-year-old comet water, mined from
the regolith in permanently shadowed craters. A rail gun used to lob shaped
loads of ice to supply the Clavius base in the early days, but Clavius had
grown, and its administration was uncomfortable with the idea of being
bombarded with ice meteors, which was why they wanted to build a railway.
In the low gravity, the waves out on the lake were five or six meters high,
and big droplets flew a long way, changing shape like amoebas, before
falling back. People were body surfing the waves; a game of water polo
had been going on for several days in one of the bays.