"Larry Niven - Wait It Out" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

bombs that would solve Pluto's one genuine mystery.



We never did solve that one. Where does Pluto get all that mass? The planet's a dozen times as dense as it has
any right to be. We could have solved that with the bombs, the same way they solved the mystery of the
makeup of the Earth, sometime in the last century. They mapped the patterns of earthquake ripples moving
through the Earth's bulk. But those ripples were from natural causes, like the Krakatoa eruption. On Pluto the
bombs would have done it better.
A bright star-sun blazes suddenly between two fangs of mountain. I wonder if they'll know the answers, when
my vigil ends.

The sky jumps and steadies, and-
 I'm looking east, out over the plain where we landed the ship. The plain and the mountains behind seem to be
sinking like Atlantis: an illusion created by the flowing stars. We slide endlessly down the black sky, Jerome
and I and the mired ship.
The Nerva-K behaved perfectly. We hovered for several minutes to melt our way through various layers of
frozen gases and get ourselves something solid to land on. Condensing volatiles steamed around us and boiled
below, so that we settled in a soft white glow of fog lit by the hydrogen flame.
Black wet ground appeared below the curve of the landing skirt. I let the ship drop carefully, carefully . . . and
we touched.
It took us an hour to check the ship and get ready to go outside. But who would be first? This was no idle
matter. Pluto would be the solar system's last outpost for most of future history, and the statue to the first man
on Pluto would probably remain untarnished forever.
Jerome won the toss. All for the sake of a turning coin, Jerome's would be the first name in the history books. I
remember the grin I forced! I wish I could force one now. He was laughing and talking of marble statues as he
went through the lock.
There's irony in that, if you like that sort of thing.
I was screwing down my helmet when Jerome started shouting obscenities into the helmet mike. I cut the
checklist short and followed him out.
One look told it all.
The black wet dirt beneath our landing skirt had been dirty ice, water ice mixed haphazardly with lighter gases
and ordinary rock. The heat draining out of the Nerva jet had melted that ice. The



rocks within the ice had sunk, and so had the landing vehicle, so that when the water froze again it was halfway
up the hull. Our landing craft was sunk solid in the. ice.
We could have done some exploring before we tried to move the ship. When we called Sammy he suggested
doing just that. But Sammy was up there in the Earth-return vehicle, and we were down here with our landing
vehicle mired in the ice of another world.
We were terrified. Until we got clear we would be good for nothing, and we both knew it.
I wonder why I can't remember the fear.
We did have one chance. The landing vehicle was designed to move about on Pluto's surface; and so she had
a skirt instead of landing jacks. Half a gravity of thrust would have given us a ground effect, safer and
cheaper than using the ship like a ballistic missile. The landing skirt must have trapped gas underneath when
the ship sank, leaving the Nerva-K engine in a bubble cavity.
We could melt our way out.
I know we were as careful as two terrified men could be. The heat rose in the Nerva-K, agonizingly slow. In
flight there would have been a coolant effect as cold hydrogen fuel ran through the pile. We couldn't use that.