"Russell, Eric Frank - Men, Martians And Machines" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russell Eric Frank)

Erect beside McNulty, expressionless as usual, Jay Score looked at that swimming Martian as if he were a pane of glass. Then his strangely lit orbs shifted their aim as if they'd seen nothing more boring. The swim-joke was getting stale, anyway.
"Men and vedras," began McNultyЧthe latter being the Martian word for 'adults' and, by implication, another piece of Martian sarcasmЧ"I have no need to enlarge upon the awkwardness of our position." That man certainly could pick his wordsЧawkward! "Already we are nearer the Sun than any vessel has been in the whole history of cosmic navigation."
"Comic navigation," murmured Kli Yang, with tactless wit.
"We'll need your humour to entertain us later," observed Jay Score in a voice so flat that Kli Yang subsided.
"We are moving toward the luminary," went on McNulty, his scowl reappearing, "faster than any ship moved before. Bluntly, there is not more than one chance in ten thousand of us getting out of this alive." He favoured Kli Yang with a challenging stare but that tentacled individual was now subdued. "However, there is that one chanceЧand we are going to take it."
We gaped at him, wondering what he meant. Every one of us knew our terrific velocity made it impossible to describe a U-turn and get back without touching the Sun. Neither could we fight our way in the reverse direction with all that mighty drag upon us. There was nothing to do but go onward, onward, until the final searing blast scattered our disrupted molecules.
"What we intend is to try a cometary," continued McNulty. "Jay and myself and the astro-computators think it's remotely possible that we might achieve it and pull through."
That was plain enough. The stunt was a purely theoretical one frequently debated by mathematicians and astro-navigators but never tried out in grim reality. The idea is to build up all the velocity that can be got and at the same time to angle into the path of an elongated, elliptical orbit resembling that of a comet. In theory, the vessel might then skim close to the Sun so supremely fast that it would swing pendulumlike far out to the opposite side of the orbit whence it came. A sweet trickЧbut could we make it?
"Calculations show our present condition fair enough to permit a small chance of success," said McNulty. "We have power enough and fuel enough to build up the necessary velocity with the aid of the Sun-pull, to strike the necessary angle and to maintain it for the necessary time. The only point about which we have serious doubts is that of whether we can survive at our nearest to the Sun." He wiped perspiration, unconsciously emphasising the shape of things to come. "I won't mince words, men. It's going to be rotten!"
"We'll see it through, skipper," said someone. A low murmur of support sounded through the cabin.
Kli Yang stood up, simultaneously waggled four joint-less arms for attention, and twittered, "It is an idea. It is excellent. I, Kli Yang, indorse it on behalf of my fellow vedras. We shall cram ourselves into the refrigerator and suffer the Terrestrial smell while the Sun goes past."
Ignoring that crack about human odour, McNulty nodded and said, "Everybody will be packed into the cold room and endure it as best they can."
"Exactly," said Kli. "Quite," he added with bland disregard of superfluity. Wiggling a tentacle-tip at McNulty, he carried on, "But we cannot control the ship while squatting in the ice-box like three and a half dozen strawberry sundaes. There will have to be a pilot in the bow. One individual can hold her on courseЧuntil he gets fried. So somebody has to be the fryee."
He gave the tip another sinuous wiggle being under the delusion that it was fascinating his listeners into complete attention. "And since it cannot be denied that we Martians are far less susceptible to extremes of heat, I suggest thatЧ"
McNulty snapped a harsh remark. His gruffness deceived nobody. The Martians were nuisancesЧbut grand guys.
"All right." Kli's chirrup rose to a shrill, protesting yelp. "Who else is entitled to become a crisp?"
"Me," said Jay Score. It was odd the way he voiced it. Just as if he were a candidate so obvious that only the stone-blind couldn't see him.
He was right, at that! Jay was the very one for the job. If anyone could take what was going to come through the fore observation ports it was Jay Score. He was big and tough, built for just such a task as this. He had a lot of stuff that none of us had got and, after all, he was a fully qualified emergency pilot. And most definitely this was an emergency, the greatest ever.
But it was funny the way I felt about him. I could imagine him up in front, all alone, nobody there, our lives depending on how much he could take, while the tremendous Sun extended its searing fingersЧ
"You!" snapped Kli Yang, breaking my train of thought. His goggle eyes bulged irefully at the big, laconic figure on the dais. "You would! I am ready to mate in four moves, as you are miserably aware, and promptly you scheme to lock yourself away."
"Six moves," contradicted Jay, airily. "You cannot do it in less than six."
"Four!" Kli Yang fairly howled. "And right at this point youЧ"
It was too much for the listening McNulty. He looked as if on the verge of a stroke. His purple face turned to the semaphoring Kli.
"Forget your blasted chess!" he roared. "Return to your stations, all of you. Make ready for maximum boost. I will sound the general call immediately it becomes necessary to take cover and then you will all go to the cold room." He started around, the purple gradually fading as his blood pressure went down. "That is, everyone except Jay."
More like old times with the rockets going full belt. They thundered smoothly and steadily. Inside the vessel the atmosphere became hotter and hotter until moisture trickled continually down our backs and a steaminess lay over the gloss of the walls. What it was like in the bow navigation-room I didn't know and didn't care to discover. The Martians were not incovenienced yet; for once their whacky composition was much to be envied.
I did not keep check on the time but I'd had two spells of duty with one intervening sleep period before the buzzers gave the general call. By then things had become bad. I was no longer sweating: I was slowly melting into my boots.
Sam, of course, endured it most easily of all the Terrestrials and had persisted long enough to drag his patient completely out of original danger. That engineer was lucky, if it's lucky to be saved for a bonfire. We put him in the cold room right away, with Sam in attendance.
The rest of us followed when the buzzer went. Our sanctuary was more than a mere refrigerator; it was the strongest and coolest section of the vessel, a heavily armoured, triple shielded compartment holding the instrument lockers, two sick bays and a large lounge for the benefit of space-nauseated passengers. It held all of us comfortably.
All but the Martians. It held them, but not comfortably. They are never comfortable at fourteen pounds pressure which they regard as not only thick but also smellyЧsomething like breathing molasses impregnated with aged goat.
Under our very eyes Kli Yang produced a bottle of hooloo scent, handed it to his half-parent Kli Morg. The latter took it, stared at us distastefully then sniffed the bottle in an ostentatious manner that was positively insulting. But nobody said anything.
All were present excepting McNulty and Jay Score. The skipper appeared two hours later. Things must have been raw up front, for he looked terrible. His haggard face was beaded and glossy, his once-plump cheeks sunken and blistered. His usually spruce, well-fitting uniform hung upon him sloppily. It needed only one glance to tell that he'd had a darned good roasting, as much as he could stand.
Walking unsteadily, he crossed the floor, went into the first-aid cubby, stripped himself with slow, painful movements. Sam rubbed him with tannic jelly. We could hear the tormented skipper grunting hoarsely as Sam put plenty of pep into the job.
The heat was now on us with a vengeance. It pervaded the walls, the floor, the air and created a multitude of fierce stinging sensations in every muscle of my body. Several of the engineers took off their boots and jerkins. In short time the passengers followed suit, discarding most of their outer clothing. My agriculturalist sat a miserable figure in tropical silks, moody over what might have been.
Emerging from the cubby, McNulty flopped into a bunk and said, "If we're all okay in four hours' time, we're through the worst part."
At that moment the rockets faltered. We knew at once what was wrong. A fuel tank had emptied and a relay had failed to cut in. An engineer should have been standing by to switch the conduits. In the heat and excitement, someone had blundered.
The fact barely had time to register before Kli Yang was out through the door. He'd been lolling nearest to it and was gone while we were trying to collect our overheated wits. Twenty seconds later the rockets renewed their steady thrum.
An intercom bell clanged right by my ear. Switching its mike, I croaked a throaty, "Well?" and heard Jay's voice coming back at me from the bow.
"Who did it?"
"Kli Yang," I told him. "He's still outside."
"Probably gone for their domes," guessed Jay. "Tell him I said thanks."
"What's it like around where you live?" I asked.
"Fierce. It isn't so good ... for vision." Silence a moment, then, "Guess I can stick it ... somehow. Strap down or hold on ready for next time I sound the ... bell."
"Why?" I half yelled, half rasped.
"Going to rotate her. Try . . . distribute ... the heat."
A faint squeak told that he'd switched off. I told the others to strap down. The Martians didn't have to bother about that because they owned enough saucer-sized suckers to weld them to a sunfishing meteor.
Kli came back, showed Jay's guess to be correct; he was dragging the squad's head-and-shoulder pieces. The load was as much as he could pull now that temperature had climbed to the point where even he began to wilt.
The Martian moochers gladly donned their gadgets, sealing the seams and evacuating them down to three pounds pressure. It made them considerably happier. Remembering that we Terrestrials use spacesuits to keep air inside, it seemed peculiar to watch those guys using theirs to keep it outside.
They had just finished making themselves comfortable and had laid out a chessboard in readiness for a minor tourney when the bell sounded again. We braced ourselves. The Martians clamped down their suckers.
Slowly and steadily the Upsydaisy began to turn upon her longitudinal axis. The chessboard and pieces tried to stay put, failed, crawled along the floor, up the wall and across the ceiling. Solar pull was making them stick to the sunward side.
I saw Kli Morg's strained, heat-ridden features glooming at a black bishop while it skittered around, and I suppose that inside his goldfish bowl were resounding some potent samples of Martian invective.