"Bud Sparhawk - Primrose and Thorn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sparhawk Bud)

sail a boat on the seas of Jupiter?"

Pascal held his breath as he awaited her answer. The success of their entire enterprise, and the payoff for
the past year's worth of intense training, rested on her reply. The answer she gave would make or break
the deal.

"I could sail a fucking bathtub on the Sun if the price was right," she spat back. "Now how the hell do I
get a drink around here?"



Rams had stopped at the station in the hopes that there would be an opportunity for business. That, and a
chance to restock his supplies. In order to keep his ship, Primrose, he had to take advantage of every
opportunity that came his way.

Jake, an irritable old scamp who knew everything there was to know about sailing the winds of Jupiter,
had taught Rams how to sail. Rams learned that every ship had its own personality. He learned how to
balance keel and ballast, how to adjust the ship's buoyancy to ride the turbulence.

After teaching him the basics of sail, rudder, keel, and line, Jake went on to show him how to heave-to in
the hurricane-force winds so that they would ride easily, neither making way nor being blown back.
They'd used that technique to mine the edges of Jupiter's storms. The updrafts in these dangerous
hurricanes often pulled metal-rich meteorites and icebergsтАФworth their weight in gold to the floating
stationsтАФfrom the lower depths of the atmosphere. Jake showed him how to "cheat" the boat close to
the edges of the turbulence, using jib and main to close in on these bits of rock and harvest them.

Jake had shared all of his secrets of playing the winds of Jupiter's storms and winning its rewards. Jake
taught Rams to love the winds on the wine-red seas.

Rams's transition from crewman to ship's captain hadn't been easy. He'd scrimped and saved every cent
he could, and signed away nearly all of his future profitsтАФall to buy a fast, outdated clipper at one of
JBI's auctions. Clippers had been deemed too inefficient to achieve JBI's "acceptable" level of
profitability.

Refitting the boat and replacing the instruments that Primrose's former crew had stripped put him even
further in debt. In addition, there had been the outlay for new sails and refitting the keel. Both cost more
than he expected and, suddenly, his debt for Primrose started to look like a financial black hole from
which there was no hope of escape.

His first year had been a disaster. The cargo he'd hauled hadn't generated enough to pay the interest on
his loans. To keep from losing her he borrowed even more. If he wasn't careful he could lose Primrose
and be thrown in jailтАФthat was the penalty for simultaneously using her as collateral for multiple loans.
Since then it had been nip and tuck, keeping one financial step ahead of bankruptcy.

The second year of operations had taught him where the good money could be earnedтАФcarrying
perishable goods on quick dashes. JBI's huge, lumbering cargo ships could move things cheaply, but they
were neither speedy nor very maneuverable. Like the old square-riggers of Earth, they flew with the
wind, stolid as the stations, and scarcely moving much faster. Sometimes their crew endured months
between station-falls.