"Kim Stanley Robinson - Mars 1 - Red Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

glinted as if stars had fallen to the pavement. People stood in clumps, silent, stunned by
the news. Frank Chalmers made his way through them, feeling their stares, moving
without thought toward the platform at the top of town; and as he walked he said to himself,
Now weтАЩll see what I can do with this planet .




Part Two

The Voyage Out



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"Since they're going to go crazy anyway, why not just send insane people in the first
place, and save them the trouble?" said Michel Duval.

He was only half joking; his position throughout had been that the criteria for
selection constituted a mind-boggling collection of double binds.

His fellow psychologists stared at him. "Can you suggest any specific changes?"
asked the chairman, Charles York.

"Perhaps we should all go to Antarctica with them, and observe them in this first
period of time together. It would teach us a lot."

"But our presence would be inhibitory. I think just one of us will be enough."

So they sent Michel Duval. He joined a hundred and fifty-odd finalists at McMurdo
Station. The initial meeting resembled any other international scientific conference,
familiar to them all from their various disciplines. But there was a difference: this was
the continuation of a selection process that had lasted for years, and would last another.
And those selected would go to Mars.

So they lived in Antarctica for over a year together, familiarizing themselves with
the shelters and equipment that were already landing on Mars in robot vehicles;
familiarizing themselves with a landscape that was almost as cold and harsh as Mars
itself; familiarizing themselves with each other. They lived in a cluster of habitats
located in Wright Valley, the largest of Antarctica's Dry Valleys. They ran a biosphere
farm, and then they settled into the habitats through a dark austral winter, and studied
secondary or tertiary professions, or ran through simulations of the various tasks they
would be performing on the spaceship Ares, or later on the red planet itself; and always,
always aware that they were being watched, evaluated, judged.
 They were by no means all astronauts or cosmonauts, although there were a dozen
or so of each, with many more up north clamoring to be included. But the majority of the