"Becalmed In Hell by Larry Niven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nebula Awards)

probe. The data we had gotten from the surface merely
confirmed in detail our previous knowledge of the hottest world
in the solar system.
"Temperature just went up to six-thirteen," said Eric. "Look,
are you through hitching?"
"For the moment."
"Good. Strap down. We're taking off."
"Oh frabjous day!" I started untangling the crash webbing
over my couch.
"We've done everything we came to do. Haven't we?"
"Am I arguing? Look, I'm strapped down."
"Yeah."
I knew why he was reluctant to leave. I felt a touch of it
myself. We'd spent four months getting to Venus in order to
spend a week circling her and less than two days in her upper
atmosphere, and it seemed a terrible waste of time.
But he was taking too long. "What's the trouble, Eric?"
"You'd rather not know."
He meant it. His voice was a mechanical, inhuman
monotone; he wasn't making the extra effort to get human
expression out of his "prosthetic" vocal apparatus. Only a
severe shock would affect him that way.
"I can take it," I said.
"Okay. I can't feel anything in the ramjet controls. Feels like
I've just had a spinal anaesthetic."
The cold in the cabin drained into me, all of it. "See if you
can send motor impulses the other way. You could run the rams
by guess-and-hope even if you can't feel them."
"Okay." One split second later, "They don't. Nothing
happens. Good thinking though."
I tried to think of something to say while I untied myself
from the couch. What came out was, "It's been a pleasure
knowing you, Eric. I've liked being half of this team, and I still
do."
"Get maudlin later. Right now, start checking my attach-
ments. Carefully."
I swallowed my comments and went to open the access door
in the cabin's forward wall. The floor swayed ever so gently
beneath my feet.
Beyond the four-foot-square access door was Eric. Eric's
central nervous system, with the brain perched at the top and
the spinal cord coiled in a loose spiral to fit more compactly into
the transparent glass-and-sponge-plastic housing. Hundreds of
wires from all over the ship led to the glass walls, where they
were joined to selected nerves which spread like an electrical
network from the central coil of nervous tissue and fatty
protective membrane.
Space leaves no cripples; and don't call Eric a cripple,
because he doesn't like it. In a way he's the ideal spaceman. His
life support system weighs only half of what mine does, and