"Allen Steele - Shepherd Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Steele Allen)

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ALLEN STEELE

SHEPHERD MOON

SHORTLY AFTER THE MONTHLY shuttle from Titan touched down at Herschel Station,
she climbed into her hardsuit and took the elevator up to the surface. She had
made up her mind a couple of weeks earlier-- in fact, she had been rehearsing
the scene in her imagination for many months now, long before she had
consciously reached her decision -- yet there was a moment when the outer hatch
opened in which she almost backed down.

She loved him. In spite of everything he had put her through, she still loved
him. But if she didn't do it now, it would be another eight months before she
got this chance again, and if she waited until then, she would surely go insane.
It was now or never.

Nonetheless, she loved him. . . .

She involuntarily took a deep breath, and that was all it took: the taste of
cold, recycled air, scented with old sweat and the vague machine odor of
recirculation pumps. She hadn't smelled fresh air in almost five years, and
short visits to the station's hydroponics bay couldn't match the recollection of
an early-morning pine forest in upstate New York just before the summer sun
burned off the fog, and even that memory was quickly fading, She had just passed
her sixty-eighth birthday: Not quite an old lady yet, but certainly not getting
any younger, and she didn't want to turn sixty-nine on Mimas.

The ground resembled the cobblestones of an ancient street in Italy, except it
was dirty, gray ice, scored by myriad craters. Ice, dirt, craters; no hills, no
atmosphere, no forests.

No life.

She was beginning to consider herself dead. Her husband . . . whether he was
still alive was debatable.

Guide ropes formed aisles that branched away in all directions. The shuttle
stood on the landing pad about a half-kilometer away, two silver barrels
squatting on spindly landing gear. She was tempted to head straight for it, but
she immediately rejected the notion. She had been married to him for twenty-six
years now, he deserved more than a note left on their cubicle's datascreen. So
she grasped the ropes and, using them to anchor her against the moon's
negligible gravity, hauled herself step by step down the center aisle.

She didn't want to look at the sky. As much as it was his obsession, it was her
damnation. She was afraid that if she allowed herself to look upward, she would
be lured into the trap that had snared him. So she refused to raise her eyes