"Bud Sparhawk - The Ice Dragon's Song" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sparhawk Bud)

The Ice Dragon's Song by Bud Sparhawk

The monstrous snow snake roared past Paul Levin at fantastic speed, leaving a
falling mist of slush and ice behind. The mist was so dense that he couldn't
even see giant Jupiter's rosy form above the horizon.
The habitat could only be a few hundred meters further, Paul thought. He
cautiously skied ahead, probing the ice with the tip of his ski before
transferring his weight forward.
Suddenly a massive jolt shook the ice pack. He was violently thrown off his feet
and tossed about. It felt as if all of Europa had shifted beneath him. He was
terrified as the surface continued to tremble. Paul didn't know whether he was
going to live or die as the tremors continued.
* * *
It was only yesterday that he had been climbing the ladder to the cab of his
father's harvester. From that vantage he saw four sets of snow snakes leaping
near the horizon, five or six kilometers away. They were backlit by Jupiter's
ruddy glow. The snakes were particularly active today, he thought, throwing
their coils high into Europa's tenuous atmosphere. Four snakes at one time were
far more than usual.
From their position Paul estimated that they had to be erupting from the minor
cracks that branched from the thick width of the main Sarpedon Linea, the
fissure the Levins had drawn for harvesting.
Paul knew that they weren't really snow snakes. They were really the plumes from
the linear geysers that routinely spewed up gases, soft ice, and particulate
matter from Europa's core. They were just slush thrown up as some ice floes were
squeezed together by Jupiter's massive gravitational effect.
Still, he wished that the snow snakes he'd fantasized about when he was younger
had been real. That would have made this hideous dead moon a place more alive,
more like somewhere a human being could live comfortably.
Paul squeezed though the harvester cab's narrow opening. The opening was barely
wide enough to allow his bulky suit to clear the frame. He settled into the hard
seat before the console. Through the thick insulation of his gloves he could
feel Europa's angry song as the harvester tore at her skin, peeling away the
dross of silicates to expose her pristine white skin beneath. It was a slow
dirge that rang in his helmet, but so soft that he had to strain to hear it at
all. For a moment he allowed himself to be immersed in the counterpoint of the
harvester's mechanical beat and the moon's slow song.
"Paul, have you adjusted the blade depth yet?" The voice of his father startled
him. Damn, just like his father to catch him daydreaming again!
"Working on it right now, Dad," he replied and started to crank the big wheel
near his right side. About twenty turns, his father had instructed him, then he
was to wait a minute and check the harvester's feed rate. Paul waited and then
did so, and waited still another minute to be certain that he had gotten the
blade adjusted properly. He wanted to make certain that it met his father's
strict standards so he wouldn't get yelled at again.
The feed rate was a measure of the depth the harvester's blade bit into the thin
topmost crust of Europa's soft ice. The deep geysers that erupted from the major
lineae, such as Sarpedon, were rich in particulates and minerals that JBI
industries wanted, particularly the various forms of corundums-mostly rubies and
sapphires-and an occasional diamond.