"Donald Moffitt - Mechanical Sky 1 - Crescent in the Sky" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moffitt Donald)

CRESCENT
IN THE
SKY
Book One of The Mechanical Sky
Donald Moffitt

Copyright ┬й 1989 by Donald Moffitt
Library of congress Catalog Card Number: 89-91802
ISBN 0-345-34477-4
Cover Art by Don Dixon
e-book ver. 1.0


"We have pried into the sky, but found it
filled with strong guards and meteors. "
the koran, sura 72: The Djinn II



CHAPTER 1

T he call to prayer sounded from his wrist monitor, and Abdul Hamid-Jones reluctantly pressed the hold
button on the haft of his micromanipulator remote and set it down care-fully on the laboratory bench. With a
martyr's sigh, he consulted the glowing 3-D arrow that seemed to be floating somewhere within his wrist on
the little holographic display.
It was a little complicated this afternoon. Mecca was located somewhere underfoot, through the entire
bulk of Mars, with an ambiguous east-west orientation, and moreover, since that face of the Earth
happened to be turned away at the moment, it was upside-down in Hamid-Jones's frame of reference.
He cast a last despairing glance at the magnified events un-folding on the big bench-mounted screen. The
restriction en-zymes had done their work, but DNA was leaking all over the place, and if he didn't do
something about annealing the loose ends immediately, the carefully prepared plasmid chimera wait-ing in
the wings would be spoiled. He was almost tempted to skip the afternoon devotion, but the door to his
cubicle was open, and the overseer, Yezid the ProdтАФa man of limited un-derstandingтАФhad been on the
prowl all day.
The insect buzz of the muezzin's voice grew more insistent at his wrist. "Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar!'' it
repeated for the last time; "La ilaha ilia Allah!" With a muttered "All right," Hamid-Jones drew the
monofilm prayer rug out of his shirt pocket and unfolded it to full size. He flexed his wrist a couple of times,
making sure that the arrow held steady, then hastily made his silent declaration of intentionтАФthough
somewhat guiltily limiting himself to the minimum number of rak'as.
"Allahu akbar," he responded with not a moment to spare and sank to his knees in the light Martian
gravity, prostrating himself in the direction that, according to the astronomical com-puter's tiny brain, most
nearly approximated that of Mecca.
Halfway through his specified rak'as, he felt a shadow fall across his back. He knew without looking that
it was Yezid and was awfully glad that he had not given in to the impulse to evade his religious duties.
Yezid had been more foul-tempered than usual of late. Only a few days ago he had had an unfortunate
Callistan slave flogged for a minor infraction of department reg-ulations. Not that Hamid-Jones himself was
in danger of such treatment; Yezid would hardly dare to touch an assistant to the Clonemaster of the Royal
Stables. But it would be deucedly embarrassing to be hauled in front of a religious court and scolded, and it
might hinder his advancement.
The shadow went away. Hamid-Jones finished his prayers and scrambled to his feet. He left the rug