"Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle - Fallen Angels" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

noses. It would be years before another dip trip was needed. He'd never be
on the list again.
Which meant that Alex MacLeod, pilot and engineer, wasn't needed any
longer. So what do you do with a pilot when pilots aren't needed? What do
the habitats do with a man who can't work outside, because one more
episode of explosive decompression will bring on a fatal stroke?
Day care. Snotty noses. Work at learning to be a teacher, a job he didn't
much like.
Look on the bright side, Alex, my boy. Maybe you won't make it back at
all.
Sure, he could always go out the way Mish Lykonov had in Moon Rat,
auguring in to Mare Tranquilitatis. They'd have a ceremony-тАФand they'd
miss the ship more than him. Even Mary. Maybe especially Mary, since
she'd got him the mission.
He straightened in his seat and touched the controls again. Maybe just a
touch of resistance ...
"Chto delayet? Alex!"
Something had prodded Gordon awake. Alex glanced to the right.
"What is it?"
"I'm getting a reading on the air temperature gauge!"
"Right. There's enough air outside now to have a temperature."
Gordon nodded, still unbelieving.
Gordon had read the book. Come to that, Gordon read a lot of books,
but books don't mean much. No one ever learned anything out of a book,
anyway. This was why they always teamed a newbie with an old pro.
Hands-on learning. The problem with on-the-job training for this job was
 Old war horse heard the trumpet again. Now it s your turn. Take the
stick." Fun was fun, but it was time for the kid to wrap his hands around
the real thing. There was only so much you could do in a simulator. "There.
Feel it?"
"Uh . . ." Gordon pulled back slightly on the copilot's stick. He looked
uncertain.
He hadn't felt anything. "Take over," Alex growled. "You're flying the
ship now. Can't you tell?"
"Well . . ." Another tentative move at the controls.
Piranha wobbled. "Hey! Yeah!"
"Good. Look, it's hard to describe, but the ship will tell you how she's
doing if you really listen. I don't mean you should forget the gauges. Keep
scanning them; they're your eyes and ears. But you've got to listen with
your hands and feet and ass, too. Make the ship an extension of your entire
body. Do you feel it? That rush? That's air moving past us at five miles per
second. Newton's not flying us anymore. You are."
Gordon flashed a nervous grin, like he'd just discovered sex.
"What's our flight path?" Alex asked.
"Uh . . ." A quick glance at the map rollout. "Greenland upcoming."
"Good. Hate to be over Norway."
"Why?"
Why. Didn't the kid listen to the downside news broadcasts? Gordon,
this is your planet! Don't you care? No, he probably didn't. It was his
grandparents planet.