"ae2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Steele Allen)

moonship, he would fall with the vessel. If such a thing were
to occur, it would be embarrassing, because someone might
have to suit up and come outside to haul him back in, but
hardly fatal ... so long as the lifeline held.
Yet, in those few seconds, common sense and experience
did little to ease his nerves. Even though it had been half a
lifetime since he'd taken his first spacewalk, and only a few
hours since he made the short jaunt between Harpers Ferry
and the moonship, this was different, because back there he
was still in Earth orbit, while here ...
Blackness. Utter starless void. A pit as deep as the universe
itself, vast as all eternity.
And he still hadn't attached the tether ...
Parnell remembered when he had taken Gene Jr. on a camp-
ing trip to Canyonlands National Park, one of the last times
he and the boy had been close enough to share a holiday. For






THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 185

three days they hiked through the Utah desert, sleeping in
canyons and atop mesas, following trail markers and his map
until they reached their destination, the confluence of the
Colorado and Green Rivers. For three days they walked, sang
Boy Scout campfire songs and Creedence Clearwater Revival
hits, took snapshots of the Needles and Druid Arch, com-
plained about boot blisters, sipped canteen water and dined on
trail mix, and walked some more until, almost unexpectedly,
they reached a place where the ground fell away and they
found themselves staring into a primitive canyon with rock
walls like the prows of enormous petrified battleships and the
Y-shaped confluence so far below, it seemed as if they were in
an airplane.
They had stood there, the toes of their hiking boots at the
verge of the drop-off, soaking in the scenery, listening to the
wind as it whispered through the enormous gorge ... and then
Gene Jr. did something only a goddamn fifteen-year-old would
think of.
He grabbed his father's shoulders and shouted, "Hey, don't
jump.
In that instant, Gene's knees had turned to butter, his arms
flailed helplessly at the dry air, and a soundless scream threat-
ened to emerge from his parched throat, because he imagined
his feet losing contact with the dry crumbling soil, falling for-
ward, plummeting thousands of feet down, down, down into
the gaping abyss below.