"Smith, E E Doc - d'Alembert 8 - Eclipsing Binaries" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

though the computer said it would miss the ship by a good seventy-five meters, Pias
wanted to take no chances at this stage. His hand moved to the attitude controls and
made ever so minor a course correction; they flew past the rock without trouble.

They were starting to reach the thickest part of the belt. The asteroid zone within the
DesPlainian solar system was not nearly as thick as that in Earth's solar system, nor was
it as dense. In order to make this a fair test, they were approaching the belt at an
oblique angle that would cause them to spend a minimum of an hour traversing the
densest part of the swarm.

That first course deflection was merely the beginning. All too quickly the asteroids were
flying past them at distances of fifty meters or less. Pias's hands were playing across his
console like those of a concert pianist at a keyboard. This was where all his training was
coming in handy. He had spent every spare moment for the last few months practicing at
these controls. The intellectual knowledge of where each control was located on the
board was of no use; his fingers had to know their way there by instinct, had to make the
proper adjustments-no more, no less-by sheer eye-to-hand coordination, bypassing the
conscious mind completely. The problem was immeasurably complicated by the fact that
he was dealing with three dimensions rather than two; he had to worry, not only about
right and left, forward and back, but also up and down.

Each correction he made altered the relative paths of the other rocks around him so that
their new courses had to be checked. Sometimes his changes actually brought him into
danger from asteroids that would have missed by a wide margin if he hadn't swerved to
avoid a previous one.

There was sweat on his forehead and a drop trickled down into his eye, burning it. He
tried to blink it away; he dared not take his hands from the control board long enough to
wipe at it. For a while he was piloting with only one good eye, which diminished his depth
perception and made his movements slightly less reliable. After a few moments his eye
watered sufficiently to dilute the sweat and the discomfort eased. It was to his credit that
not once during that time did Jules make a move to take control away from him.

Then they were through the worst part of the belt, and Pias's breathing started returning
to normal. He made a casual maneuver to slide gracefully away from one approaching
asteroid-and suddenly found himself facing an onrushing behemoth head on. It appeared
out of nowhere on the scanner and came straight toward him at a speed nearly equal to
his own.

If Pias had stopped to think, he and Jules might have ended up as slime on the face of
the space rock. His hands moved with a life of their own, swerving the ship's direction so
quickly that he was nearly knocked out of his chair. He imagined he could hear the
asteroid scraping along the side of the ship as they passed one another, even though the
distance was nearly ten meters. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Jules's hands
poised over the co-pilot's controls; the more experienced man would have taken over in
another fraction of a second-but even that might have been too late.

Then abruptly they were out of the zone and into what was considered open space
again. The sensors indicated' completely empty space ahead, so Pias reduced speed;
switched on the autopilot once more, and sagged limply back in his seat.