"Allen Steele - Orbital Decay" - читать интересную книгу автора (Steele Allen)

highways in Pennsylvania. When they lower a couple of men down by
cable, they'll find my footprints in the dust at the bottom of the
crevasse. They'll follow those lonely footprints as they lead for a
mile and a half northwest, the steep walls of the crevasse rising to
either side like enormous hedgerows of ancient volcanic rock.

It's dark down here, even during the high noon of the two-week lunar
day. Their helmet lanterns will cast ghostly circles of light along
the walls and in the deep impressions of my footprints. They will feel
the cold lonesomeness which is destined, in these last hours of my
life, to be my dying impression.

Actually, I understand that oxygen asphyxiation is not a bad way to go,
relatively speaking. There's worse ways to die in space. In the end
I'll probably babble my head off, gleefully
talking about moon worms
as my lungs fill with carbon dioxide. I'll go out crazy as a shithouse
rat, but at least I'll be happy. I think.

When they come to the end of my tracks, they'll find me sitting on my
rump with my back propped against a boulder, quite dead. They will
also find the greatest discovery ever made. I'm serious. It's down
here in this crevasse with me, and the search party would have to be
blind to miss it.

I only wish I could be around for the moment. I wouldn't be able to
see the expressions on their faces through the reflective coating on
their helmet visors, but I can imagine what words will pass through
their comlink.

Although, now to think of it, even hearing what they had to say would
be impossible. If my suit radio, or the radio in my poor wrecked
tractor was still working, I wouldn't be sitting here now, waiting to
die.

Life is just full of little ironies, ain't it?

I wonder which will go out first: the oxygen supply, the batteries in
my life-support system, which keep me from freezing to death, or the
microcassette into which I'm dictating these last thoughts.



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Theoretically I shouldn't be wasting precious air in speaking; I should
be conserving it in hopes that a search party from Descartes Station
will find me in time.