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

be plenty of work for us.

We signed up as part of a roving seismology team, placing remote
stations at various points around the MoonтАЩs equator. The Exawatt plant had
been dismantled and a monitoring station built on its site to try and track the
period of the black hole, which someone had labeled Mendeleev X-1. Mike
was as happy as I had ever seen him; he was getting some of the raw data
and doing his own calculations on the black holeтАЩs accretion rate and orbital
path within the Moon. He stayed up long after our workday was over,
hunched over his slate in the driving chair of our rolligon, with sunlight
pouring in through the bubble canopy while I tried to sleep in the hammock
stretched across the cabin, my skin itching with the Moon dust which got
everywhere, and our Moon suits propped in back like two silent witnesses
to our squabbling. His latest best estimate was that the Moon had between
two hundred and five thousand days.

тАЬBut things will start to get exciting before then.тАЭ

тАЬExcitement is something I can do without. What do you mean?тАЭ

тАЬOh, itтАЩll be a lot of fun.тАЭ

тАЬYouтАЩre doing it again, you son of a bitch.тАЭ

тАЬYouтАЩre the geologist, Frank,тАЭ Mike said. тАЬItтАЩs easy enough to work
out. ItтАЩs justтАФтАЭ

тАЬBasic physics. Yeah. Well, you tell me if itтАЩs going to put us in
danger. Okay?тАЭ

тАЬOh, it wonтАЩt. Not yet, anyhow.тАЭ

We were already picking up regular moonquakes on the seismometer
network. With a big point mass swinging back and forth through it, the
MoonтАЩs solid iron core was ringing like a bell. There were some odd
subsidiary traces, too, smooshy echoes as if spaces were opening in the
mantle тАФhard to believe, because pressure should have annealed any
voids. I was pretty sure that Mike had a theory about these anomalies, too,
but I kept quiet. After all, I was the geologist. I should have been able to
work it out.

Meanwhile, we toured west across the Mare Insularium, with its lava
floods overlaid by ejecta from Copernicus, and on across the Oceanus
Procellarum, dropping seismometers every two hundred kilometers. We
made good time, speeding across rolling, lightly cratered landscape,
detouring only for the largest wrinkle ridges, driving through the long day
and the Earth-lit night into brilliant dawn, the sun slowly moving across the
sky toward noon once more. The Moon had its own harsh yet serene
beauty, shaped mainly by vulcanism and impacts. Without weather, erosion
took place on geological timescales, but because almost every feature was