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

everything short of his visit to the head ... altogether, h
passengers made him need to escape the ship for a few mi
utes. Get a breath of fresh air, as it were, although he reckon
that if someone had so much as farted, he would have tak
it as a good excuse to check the oxygen tanks.
So now he was alone, and what good had it done him? Ju
given him the time to confront old memories, and bad ones
that.
Parnell pushed it all to the back of his mind. Letting t
lifeline trail behind him, he pulled himself hand over ha
along the railing until he reached the outrigger spar leading
the radar mast. His helmet lamp traced the long I-beam un






THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE 187

it ended at the pair of silver dish-shaped radar antennas at its
end.
"Going out on the starboard mast now," he said.
We copy, Lewitt replied. Good luck.
Easy now. One hand over the other. A rookie in the water
tanks at Houston could do this. The LRR dish was the closer
one of the pair, only fifteen feet away.
Once he was out from under the hemispherical bulge of the
personnel sphere, he could have looked straight up and seen
the Moon, but he didn't allow himself that privilege. It was
too distracting. Instead, he concentrated on the beam, ab-
sently humming to himself until he realized that he was doing
the refrain from "Susie Q- one of the CCR songs he and Gene
Jr. had sung during the Utah trip. He stopped himself. Now
was no time to be woolgathering, for chrissakes . .
When he reached the dish, he checked it first. It was still
intact, so he moved to the silver Mylar-wrapped instrument
module mounted behind it. "Nothing seems to be wrong
here," he said, gently jostling both the antenna and module.
"No sign of micrometeor impact. Looks good as new."
Ummm ... copy that, Gene. Lewitt's voice sounded dis-
tracted. I'm still not getting anything here, though.
"Nothing?"
Not even a twitch. Flatline all the way. Jay paused. Maybe
the module connection is bad. Try it again.
The instrument module was about the size of a shoebox,
attached to the antenna by a single long bolt through its cen-
ter. Parnell slipped a torqueless screwdriver from his utility
belt and used it to unfasten the bolt. He caught the bolt with
his right hand before it could drift away, then gently pulled off