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

the module and turned it over in his thick gloves. The eight-
prong connection appeared to be undamaged, and he told Lew-
itt so.
Might be a hardware failure, Lewitt said. Why don't you
bring it in for a test? If it's screwed up, maybe I can run a
bypass.
"Yeah. Sounds like a good idea." Parnell opened a cargo
pocket on his thigh and slipped both the module and the re-

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ALLEN STEELE

taining bolt into it. "Okay, I'm coming back in. Have some
hot chocolate waiting for me."
Roger that. We'll keep the porch light on.
Clumsily turning around, Parnell began to make his way
back down the spar, his hands gripping the I-beam for support.
Halfway down the beam, though, his extended left leg be-
came tangled in a dangling loop of the lifeline. Cursing under
his breath, he reached down with his right hand to pull the
line free. This caused his left hand to slip from the girder, and
for a few moments he was drifting free of the spar.
He almost called out, but caught himself. He wasn't in trou-
ble, and he didn't want to sound like a panicky rookie on his
first EVA. just the type of thing Rhodes would love to put in
her next dispatch. He could almost hear it now: "A moment
of peril today aboard the U.S.S. Conestoga, when mission
commander Eugene Parnell, during a routine spacewalk to fix
a radar dish, was nearly lost when he. . ." and so forth.
Instead, he quickly reached up with his right hand to grab
the beam again. As he did, his fingers happened to slip within
a slender electrical cable attached to the beam itself.
To his surprise, the cable was loose; the slightest pull of his
forefinger yanked it several inches from the brackets that held
it to the beam.
He managed to catch the beam itself with his left hand,
while he stared at the loose cable. Twisting his body until he
could clearly look through his helmet faceplate, he saw that
the cable led straight to the LRR antenna.