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

The chief threw a final glance at the brownish-red brumous dome of
Jupiter swelling over the range and thought he would like some day to catch
all the four big satellites above the horizon with Jupiter in the first
quarter, half orange, half brownish red. Then it occurred to him he had
never seen Jupiter setting. That must be quite a sight too-the exospheric
glow dying out and the stars flickering up one after another in the
darkening sky like diamond needles against black velvet. But usually
Jupiter-set is the peak of the working day.
The chief entered the lift and dropped down to the bottom floor. The
station was fairly big and occupied several tiers hacked through the solid
ice and encased in plastic metal. Fifty-three people manned it. Fifty-three
hungry men and women.
The chief glanced into the recreation rooms as he went along but found
them empty save for the spherical swimming pool where someone was splashing
about, the room echoing to the sound. The chief went on stepping unhurriedly
in his heavy magnetic boots. There was next to no gravity on Amaltheia and
that was highly inconvenient. People got accustomed to it, of course, but at
first they all felt hydrogen-filled and any moment likely to burst out of
their magnetic footgear. Sleeping in particular had cost them all a lot of
getting accustomed to.
 Two astrophysicists, hair wet after a shower, overtook him, said hullo
and passed on to the lifts. Something was wrong with the magnetic soles of
one of them, for he was dancing and swaying awkwardly as he tried to keep
pace with the other. The chief turned into the canteen, where about fifteen
people were still having their breakfast.
Uncle Hoak, the station's nutrition engineer, was himself serving the
breakfasts on a trolley. He was gloomy. Not that he was of a sunny
disposition ordinarily. But today he was definitely gloomy. As a matter of
fact so had he been the day before and the day before that-indeed ever since
that unfortunate day when the radio message about the food disaster came
from Callisto. J-Station's foodstores on Callisto had been invaded by a
fungus. That had happened before, but this time the stores were destroyed
completely, to the last biscuit, and so were the chlorella plantations.
Life was hard on Callisto, for no means of keeping the fungus out of
the quarters had yet been found. It was a remarkable fungus. It penetrated
any wall and demolished any kind of food. It just gobbled up chlorella.
Sometimes it attacked men but it was not dangerous. At first people were
afraid of it and the bravest flinched discovering on their hands the
characteristic grey-coloured slimy film. But there was no pain or
after-effects. Some even claimed the fungus was a good tonic.
"Hey, Uncle Hoak," somebody shouted. "Are we going to have biscuits for
dinner as well?"
The chief did not notice who it was, for everyone in the canteen
immediately turned their faces to Uncle Hoak and stopped eating. Nice young
faces, deeply tanned almost all of them. And already drawn a little. Or was
he imagining things?
"You will have soup for dinner," said Uncle Hoak.
"Ripping," somebody said, and again the chief didn't notice who.
He sat down at the nearest table. Hoak wheeled up the trolley and
deposited a breakfast on the table-two biscuits on a plate, half a bar of