"Larry Niven - Rainbow Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

Afterword: Svetz and the Beanstalk



Another major advance in our understanding of Mars has come from analysis of the MOLA topographic
data. Although relative topographic variations have been known since 1972 from Mariner 9 data, the
detailed topography needed to understand many of the features on Mars is only now being provided
by MGS. Even with the present elliptical orbit, MOLA is providing vertical resolutions of about 30
cm with horizontal resolutions of 300 to 400 m. MOLA has been able to provide detailed topographic
information about individual features such as impact craters, volcanoes, fractures, channels, and
polar deposits. One discovery is that some of the channels, including Ares Valles in whose outwash
area Mars Pathfinder landed, are deeper than previously thought, indicating more water has flowed


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through the channels than earlier suspected. In addition, MOLA has revealed that the northern
plains of Mars are extremely flat, as smooth as the Earth's oceanic abyssal plains. The smoothness
of the northern plains supports the theory that they are sediments deposited in a vast ocean which
once covered this area.
"Revealing the Secrets of Mars" by Nadine G. Barlow Ad Astro-the magazine of the National Space
Society
July/August 1998




RAINBOW MARS

+390 Atomic Era. Svetz was nearly home, but the snake was waking up.
Gravity pulled outward from the center of the extension cage as it was pulled toward present time.
The view through the wall was a jitter of color and motion. Svetz lay on his back and looked up at
the snake. A filter helmet showed only as a faint golden glow around its head. It wouldn't
strangle on post-Industrial air, and it couldn't bite him through the inflated bubble.
A ripple ran down the feathers along its spine, a gaudy flurry of color, nine meters from head to
tip of tail. It seemed to take forever. Tiny rainbow-colored wings fluttered at its neck. Its eyes
opened.
The natives of - 550 Atomic Era would have carved his heart out without losing that same look of
dispassionate arrogance.
Svet/ raised the noodle rifle.
A loop of it shimmied aside as he fired. The anesthetic crystal needle shattered on the wall. The
shimmy ran down the tail, while Svetz fired again and missed again. Then the tailtip snapped down
and flicked the needle gun out of his hands.
Svetz cringed back.
The rainbow-feathered head lifted to study him.
+1108 Atomic Era. Watery colors around the cage took on shapes. For an instant Svetz saw startled
techs, and Ra Chen yell-tig. Then the snake fell over him in coils, knocking the breath out f him.
Coils constricted around his torso. He wriggled an arm free and reached for the needle gun, but a
loop of tail coiled around his wrist.