"Paul Preuss - Venus Prime 1 - Breaking Strain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preuss Paul)

The arroyo narrowed and its walls grew higher; it had been cutтАУlanguidly, over centuriesтАУinto an
alluvial fan from the uplifted mountains ahead, and there ahead the gorge through which the eroding
waters flowed loomed abruptly, a gash in the red rock as acute as a gun sight.

She was still flying by hand, and she felt more confident with every passing second she stayed in the air.
She contemplated her ability to handle a piece of complicated machinery she could not remember ever
having seen beforeтАУknowing what it was for without thinking about it, knowing the logic of it, knowing
the particular layout of its controls and instruments and the capabilities of its brainy subsystems.

She reasoned that she had practiced in it. Knowing this, she reasoned that there was some weighty cause
for her memory lapse.

She further reasoned that there was cause for her fear of the orange man, the fear that had made her run.
She reasonedтАУbecause she remembered the entire day (why did that in itself seem strange?) from the
moment she had awakened with an urgent desire to brush her teeth, and the accumulated anomalies of
that day could not be ignoredтАУthat a chunk of her life had been deliberately taken from her and that she
was in danger precisely because of that, and that the orange man had had something to do with her
missing years and with her present danger.

SpartaтАУnot her real name, it occurred to her, but an identity she had assumed for a sufficient yet still
hidden reasonтАУspoke to the helicopter. тАЬSnark, this is L. N. 30851005, do you acknowledge?тАЭ

After a momentary pause the helicopter said, тАЬI acknowledge your command.тАЭ

тАЬWesterly heading, minimum altitude and maximum ground speed consistent with evasion protocols. On
auto, please.тАЭ

тАЬAuto confirmed.тАЭ

Flatiron walls of red Jurassic sandstone loomed and flashed by on either side of the ship. A streambed of
tumbled granite boulders mounted in irregular stairsteps up the rapidly ascending gorgeтАУdry now but for
patches of snow, it would be an intermittent torrent during the storms of late summer. One moment the
ship was brushing the bare pink branches of tangled willows in the streambed, the next it was flying
almost straight up the mountainside, dodging leaning ponderosas and overhangs of basaltic cliff, until
suddenly the gorge narrowed to a shallow ravine in a forest of pines, and the mountain flattened into
meadowland dotted with stands of aspen.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Bureaub...0-%20Venus%20Prime%201%20-%20Breaking%20Strain.html (16 of 182)23-12-2006 18:54:42
 ARTHUR C. CLARKE'S VENUS PRIME: VOLUME I



Sparta had adjusted the scale of the terrain-matching projection that unscrolled in front of her and now
studied it, searching the image until she found the topography she needed. тАЬSnark, proceed to forty
degrees north, one hundred and five degrees, forty minutes, twenty seconds west.тАЭ

тАЬForty north, one-oh-five, forty, twenty west confirmed.тАЭ The helicopter slowed suddenly and hesitated
at the edge of the aspen woods, its snout quivering as if sniffing for a trail.