"Kim Stanley Robinson - A Martian Romance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

and because it reads the tilt, and reefs in. Also we have a lot of ballast. And
there are weights in the deck that are held magnetically on the windward
side. ItтАЩs like having a heavy crew sitting on the windward rail.тАЭ

****

This first day out is clear, the royal blue sky crinkling in a gusty west wind.
Under the clear dome of the cockpit itтАЩs warm, their air at a slightly higher
pressure than outside. Sea level is now around 300 millibars, and lowering
year by year, as if for a great storm that never quite comes. They skate at
speed around the majestic promontory of the Phlegra Peninsula, its great
prow topped by a white-pillared Doric temple. Staring up at it Eileen listens
to Hans and Frances discuss the odd phenomenon of the Phlegra Montes,
seaming the north coast of Elysium like a long ship capsized on the land;
unusually straight for a Martian mountain range, as are the Erebus Montes
to the west. As if they were not, like all the rest of the mountain ranges on
Mars, the remnants of crater rims. Hans argues for them being two
concentric rings of a really big impact basin, almost the size of the Big Hit
itself but older than the Big Hit, and so mostly obliterated by the later
impact, with only Isidis Bay and much of the Utopian and Elysian Seas left
to indicate where the basin had been. тАЬThen the ranges could have been
somewhat straight-ened out in the deformation of the Elysium bulge.тАЭ

Frances shakes her head, as always. Never once has Eileen seen the
two of them agree. In this case Frances thinks the ranges may be even
older than Hans does, remnants of early tectonic or proto-tectonic plate
movement. ThereтАЩs a wide body of evidence for this early tectonic era, she
claims, but Hans is shaking his head: тАЬThe andesite indicating tectonic
action is younger than that. The Phlegras are early Noachian. A pre-Big Hit
big hit.тАЭ

Whatever the explanation, there the fine prow of rock stands, the end
of a steep peninsula extending straight north into the ice for four hundred
kilometers out of Firewater. A long sea cliff falling into the sea, and the
same on the other side. The pilgrimage out the spine to the temple is one
of the most famous walks on Mars; Eileen has made it a number of times
since Roger first took her on it about

тАЬThatтАЩs not nothing,тАЭ Eileen protests. тАЬThatтАЩs three things.тАЭ

тАЬTrue. And we may still tip over. But if we do we can always get out
and pull it back upright.тАЭ

They sit in the cockpit and look up at the sail, or ahead at the ice. The
iceboatтАЩs navigation steers them away from the rottenest patches, spotted
from satellites, and so the automatic pilot changes their course frequently,
and they shift around the cockpit when necessary. Floury patches slow
them the most, and over these the boat sometimes decelerates pretty
quickly, throwing the unprepared forward into the shoulder of the person
sitting next to them. Eileen is banged into by Hans and Frances more than