"Alastair Reynolds - Minla's Flowers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

Merlin made out the tiny moving forms of birdlike creatures, wheeling and
orbiting in powerful thermals, some of them coming and going from roosts on the
lower ledges.

тАЬBut that isnтАЩt a bird,тАЭ Tyrant said, highlighting a larger moving shape.

Merlin felt an immediate pang of recognition as the image zoomed. It was an
aircraft: a ludicrously fragile assemblage of canvas and wire. It had a crescent moon
painted on both wings. ThereтАЩd been a machine not much more advanced than that
in the archive inside the Palace of Eternal Dusk, preserved across thirteen hundred
years of family history. Merlin had even risked taking it outside once, to see for
himself if he had the nerve to repeat his distant ancestorтАЩs brave crossing. He still
remembered the sting of repri-mand when heтАЩd brought it back, nearly ruined.

This aircraft was even flimsier and slower. It was driven by a single chug-ging
propellor rather than a battery of rocket-assisted turbines. It was fol-lowing the rim
of the landmass, slowly gaining altitude. Clearly it intended to make landfall. The air
on Lecythus was thicker at sea level than on Pleni-tude, but the little machine must
still have been very close to its safe op-erational ceiling. And yet it would have to
climb even higher if it was to traverse the raised rim.

тАЬFollow it,тАЭ Merlin said. тАЬKeep us astern by a clear two kilometers. And set
hull to stealth.тАЭ
 MerlinтАЩs ship nosed in behind the struggling aircraft. He could see the single
pilot now, goggled and helmeted within a crude-looking bubble canopy. The plane
had reached ten kilometers, but it would need to double that to clear the upturned
rim. Every hundred meters of altitude gained seemed to tax the aircraft to the limit,
so that it climbed, leveled, climbed. It trailed sooty hyphens behind it. Merlin could
imagine the sputtering protest from the little engine, the fear in the pilotтАЩs belly that
the motor was going to stall at any moment.

That was when an airship hove around the edge of the visible cliff. Calli-opeтАЩs
rays flared off the golden swell of its envelope. Beneath the long ribbed form was a
tiny gondola, equipped with multiple engines on skeletal out-riggers. The airshipтАЩs
nose began to turn, bringing another crescent-moon emblem into view. The aircraft
lined up with the airship, the two of them at about the same altitude. Merlin watched
as some kind of netlike apparatus unfurled in slow motion from the belly of the
gondola. The pilot gained further height, then cut the aircraftтАЩs engine. Powerless
now, it followed a shallow glide path toward the net. Clearly, the airship was going to
catch the aircraft and carry it over the rim. That must have been the only way for
aircraft to arrive and depart from the hovering landmass.

Merlin watched with a sickened fascination. HeтАЩd occasionally had a
pre-sentiment when something was going to go wrong. Now he had that feel-ing
again.

Some gust caught the airship. It began to drift out of the aircraftтАЩs glide path.
The pilot tried to compensateтАФMerlin could see the play of light shift on the wings
as they warpedтАФbut it was never going to be enough. With-out power, the aircraft
must have been cumbersome to steer. The engines on the gondola turned on their