"Alastair Reynolds - A Spy In Europa" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

speech patterns, siphoning content from otherwise normal Canasian.

"Last code we taught her."

"Alright. What's her angle?"

Control chose his words - skating around the information excised from

Cholok's message. "She wants to give us something," he said. "Something

valuable. She's acquired it accidentally. Someone good has to smuggle it

out."

"Flattery will get you everywhere, Control."



The muzak rose to a carefully timed crescendo as the elevator plunged

through the final layer of ice. The view around and below was literally

dizzying, and Vargovic registered exactly as much awe as befitted his

Martian guise. He knew the Demarchy's history, of course - how the hanging

cities had begun as points of entry into the ocean; air-filled observation

cupolas linked to the surface by narrow access shafts sunk through the

kilometre-thick crustal ice. Scientists had studied the unusual smoothness

of the crust, noting that its fracture patterns echoed those on Earth's

ice-shelves, implying the presence of a water ocean. Europa was further

from the sun than Earth, but something other than solar energy maintained

the ocean's liquidity. Instead, the moon's orbit around Jupiter created

stresses which flexed the moon's silicate core, tectonic heat bleeding

into the ocean via hydrothermal vents.

Descending into the city was a little like entering an amphitheatre -

except that there was no stage; merely an endless succession of steeply
tiered lower balconies. They converged toward a light-filled infinity,

seven or eight kilometres below, where the city's conic shape constricted