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

"There's war in Norway. If we flew over, somebody would cruise a
missile at us sure as moonquakes, and we'd never even know which side
did it."
The new tiling was wonderful. In the old days, the ship's skin would be
glowing; but now . . . Four thousand degrees and no visible sign at all. Still,
they'd be glowing like a madman's dream on an IR screen, new tiles or no,
and that was all the Downers would need to vector in on.
had pooled their resources, everyone was supposed to learn each other s
language; but Alex hadn't gotten past "Ya tebye lyublyu." Hello was
"zdravstvuitye." Alex thought there was something masochistic about
speaking a language that strung so many consonants together. "Be fair,
Gordon. If you had ice growing a mile thick in your backyard, wouldn't
you want to move south?"
Gordon mulled it. "Why south?"
He couldn't help the grin. "Never mind. Let me take her again. Hang on,
while I kill some velocity. Watch what I do and follow me." He stroked the
stick gently.
Here we go, baby. You'll love this. Drop the scoop face-on to the wind.
Open wide. That's right. Spread your tail, just for a moment ... Alex
realized that his lips were moving and clamped them shut. The younger
ones didn't understand when he talked to the ship. Gordon was having
enough trouble feeling the ship. "Okay," he said finally, "that's done. Take
over, again."
Gordon did, more smoothly than before. Alex watched him from the
corner of his eye while pretending to study the instruments. Piranha was a
sweet little ship. Alex had flown her once, years before, and considered her
the best of the three remaining scoopers. Maybe that was just Final Trip
nostalgia. Maybe he would have felt the same about whichever ship he
flew on his last dip; but he would shed a special tear for Piranha when they
retired her. The scoopers were twenty-two years old already and, while
there was not much wear and tear parked in a vacuum, screaming through
the Earth's atmosphere like a white hot banshee did tend to age the gals a
bit. Jaws was already retired. Here was Gordon at nineteen, just getting
started; and the ships at twenty-two were ready to pack it in. Life was
funny.
Alex ran a hand lightly across the instrument panel. Scoopships were
pretty in an ugly sort of way: lifting bodies with gaping scoops that made
them look like early jet airplanes. They could not land-тАФno landing gear-тАФ
Alex? Gordon said suddenly. Why not Greenland?
"Hmm?"
"Why isn't anyone in Greenland shooting missiles?"
Alex grinned. That was good. Gordon was flying a scoopship on a dip
trip, sucking air at five miles per, and trying to make casual conversation.
That's right, Gordo. You can't do this sort of thing all tensed up; you've got to be
relaxed.
"Nobody there but Eskimos," he explained. "An Ice Age doesn't bother
them any. Hell, they probably think they've all died and gone to Inuit
Heaven."
"Eskimos I do not know. Gogol once wrote good story that speaks of
Laplanders but I did not understand-тАФ" The sky had turned from black to