"Arkady and Boris Strugatsky_Destination Amaltheia" - читать интересную книгу автора (Strugatski Arkady)

hours. But it takes only twelve hours to complete its orbit round Jupiter.
That is why the enormous shapeless hump of Jupiter rears in close view every
thirteen and a half hours. And that is a spectacular sight. But to see it at
all you have to take a lift to the spectrolite-domed top floor. When your
eyes get accustomed to the darkness outside you begin to make out an
ice-bound plain receding to the serrated mountain range on the horizon. The
sky is black and studded with bright unblinking stars. These shed a faint
light on the plain, the mountain range a pitch-black gap in the starry sky.
But if you look long enough you will make out the jagged tops. Sometimes
Ganymede's mottled crescent or Callisto's silver disc-or more rarely
both-will come out and hang above the range. Then on the plain grey fingers
of shade stretch from end to end across the gleaming ice. And when the Sun
is a small ball of blinding fire above the horizon the plain turns blue, the
shadows black and every crack or hump stands out in stark relief. Coal-black
spots on the spacefield look 'like big freshly-frozen puddles and you feel
like running over that thin crust of ice to hear it crunch under your
magnetic boots and see it fan out in dark wrinkles.
But that is not yet really spectacular. All that can be seen in other
places besides Amaltheia. It's when Jupiter rises that the sight becomes
really spectacular. And it's really spectacular only when seen from
Amaltheia-especially when Jupiter rises in pursuit of the Sun. It all starts
with a greenish-brown glow-Jovian exosphere- gaining in intensity behind the
rugged peaks. As it grows brighter it extinguishes one by one the stars that
the Sun has not been able to obscure and spreads across the black sky,
slowly closing in on the Sun itself, which it suddenly engulfs. That is a
moment not to miss. That is a moment when, as if at a flourish of a magic
wand, the greenish-brown glow turns instantaneously blood red. You tense for
it and yet it always catches you unprepared. The Sun turns red and the
ice-bound plain turns red and the small dome of the radio-beacon starts
sending off blood-red reflections. Even the shadow the mountaintops throw
turns pink. By and by the red darkens, turns brownish and then, at last, the
enormous brown hump of Jupiter rolls into view over the rugged peaks. The
Sun is still visible and red, red-hot as molten metal, like a round disc
against a brownish-red backdrop. For some obscure reason this brownish red
is classed as an unattractive colour. People who are of this opinion must
never have watched Jupiter rise in pursuit of the Sun, never have seen the
brownish-red glow across half the sky with the clear-cut red disc
superimposed on it. Then the disc disappears. Only Jupiter remains, huge,
brown, shaggy. It has taken its time crawling over the horizon as if
swelling, and now fills a full quarter of the sky. Black and green belts of
ammonia cloud criss-cross the planet. That too is beautiful. Unfortunately
you can seldom watch the sight till that stage. There is work to be done.
When you are on observation duty you see the sight in toto, of course, but
then you don't look for beauty....
The head of J-Station looked at his watch. The Jupiter-rise today
promised to be as spectacular as ever but it was time he went below to his
office to do some hard thinking. In the shadow of the cliffs the
trellis-work skeleton of the Big Antenna stirred and began unfolding. The
radio astronomers were about to start observations. The hungry radio
astronomers.