"Andre Norton - Cat Fantastic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

picture of man and animal in precarious balance against the panorama of cliff, sky and canyon.
Bursts of noise from other scalers drilling on either side didn't appear to bother the bobcat in the least.
She sat on Mike's chest, kneading the front of. his overalls as if she were a household moggy sitting on
someone's knee before a cozy fire. When another scaler flipped a cigarette butt at Mike, telling him to
quit fooling with the cat and get back to work, Tonochpa only yawned derisively and crawled back into
the knapsack.
I watched from overhead as Mike packed explosive into the holes he drilled, set the charges, then jerked
the line as a signal for someone to haul him up before the stuff blew. It was close. I glimpsed his feet
disappearing out of my view field only a breath before the rockface puffed out and a rumbling growl
shook the cliff.
I picked my way along the plankwalk, arriving just as the other men hauled him up. His face was masked
in gray from sweat and rockdust, making him look as though he were wearing pancake makeup. He spat
grit, then grinned as he saw me.
"You saw us, Dale Curtis? Tonochpa and me at the end of the long line? Now you believe, hey?"
"I believe," I said.
"You got the pants she ripped?"
I handed over the bundle wrapped in brown paper. Flinging one hand behind him, Mike flipped up the
knapsack flap and let the bobcat scramble out. Perched on his shoulder, she appraised me. I expected
that she might be slightly ruffled by the nearness of the blast Mike had just set, but not one hair was awry.
Mike stroked her with rough affection. "I'm not afraid, she's not afraid," he announced proudly. "Best
team on the high walls."
A whistle shrilled from the canyon floor, echoing between the walls. It reminded me that my own work
hours would soon begin. I had to catch the Monkeyslide on its return trip.
"You come see me again," Mike said as I took my leave of him, "you get your pants back. Fixed. Deal?"
He clucked his tongue at Tonochpa, who returned to the knapsack.
"Deal," I agreed. I didn't even wince when he shoved my parcel in with the bobcat.
I braved the Monkeyslide to retrieve my pants and then a few times more just to watch Mike and
Tonochpa. Mike did a good job with the pants. They couldn't be made good as new, but he'd sewed up
the rents with small strong stitches that would probably outlast the cloth itself. The repair on my leg
proved equally, successful. The wound healed rapidly and the dried agave peeled off by itself, just as
Mike said it would.
My problem with the instrument cabling remained, though my temporary wiring functioned well enough to
postpone the final version. Each day I monitored the health of the growing dam via the signals sent from a
network of strain gauges and joint contraction meters. From these instruments, I could tell if the concrete
was hardening to design strength and whether stress was concentrating at vulnerable points or distributing
evenly throughout the structure.
The wiggling traces of the Beckman strip chart recorder pens formed patterns, first on the paper, then in
my notebook and ultimately in my mind. For me, the dam was an interconnected web of signals, all
making up an entity that seemed almost alive. I could watch the great structure "breathe" slowly over
intervals of several hours. I could see it expand and contract from the effects of temperature and shift to
accommodate itself to the mass of new concrete pours. To me it was a great concrete beast, expanding,
waking, and gathering strength for the task of holding back the river.
The multiple channels of information coming from my instruments had their own ranges of variation
between parameters I had established by experience. The recorder pens wandered on the chart grids,
but always remained within the bounds I expected and returned to the averages I had calculated.
One morning, about three weeks after I first visited Mike and Tonochpa, I noticed one of my strain
gauge readings had drifted up overnight. Not beyond limits, but enough to be noticeable. I checked the
channel for electrical problems, then the instrument's calibration. Everything came out clean.
Over the next few days I watched the trace closely, ready to call the construction engineers if the strain
gauge should indicate a problem. I'd installed this one near a recent concrete pour and counted on it to