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

Bykov was wide awake now.
"I'm touching down on Amaltheia," he said. "Then I'm making a round
trip with the planetologists inside the exosphere. And then I go back to
Earth. Which means another oversun!"
"Wait," said Mikhail Antonovich. "Just a moment...."
"And here you're drawing up a crazy programme: for me as though there
were stores of propellent waiting for us."
The door was pushed ajar. Bykov turned to look. Dauge's head was
squeezed into the crack. The eyes swept round the control room and his voice
implored:
"I say, boys, isn't Varya here?"
"Get out!" Bykov snarled.
The head vanished. The door was closed carefully.
"The loafers," said Bykov. "Listen here, navigator. I'll get the
propellent for the return oversun by melting down your gammon." ,
"Don't shout," Mikhail Antonovich said indignantly. He thought a moment
and added, red-faced, "Damn it."
A silence descended. Mikhail Antonovich returned to his place and they
sat glowering at each other across the desk.
"The leap into the exosphere is calculated. The return oversun is
nearly finished," he placed a pudgy hand on the heap of papers on the desk.
"But if you've got cold feet we can easily refuel on Antimars...."
That was the cosmogators' name for an artificial planet that moved
almost in the Martian orbit on the other side of the Sun. It was just a huge
store of propellent, a fully automated refuelling station.
"And I don't see why you should bawl at me," said Mikhail Antonovich.
The word "bawl" he said in a whisper. Mikhail Antonovich was cooling down.
So was Bykov.
"All right," he said. "Sorry, Misha." Mikhail Antonovich smiled
readily. "I shouldn't have gone off the deep end 'like that," said Bykov.
"Oh, it's all right, old fellow," Mikhail Antonovich was saying
hurriedly. "Nothing to bother about. ... Just look what a perfect spiral it
will make. From the vertical," his hands followed his thoughts, "into the
plane of Amaltheia's orbit just above the exosphere and then a free-coasting
path to the rendezvous. At the rendezvous the relative velocity will be a
mere thirteen feet per second. The maximum G-load will be only twenty-two
per cent and weightlessness will only last thirty to forty minutes. And
there should only be a slight margin of error."
"It should be slight because it's a theta-algorithm," said Bykov. He
wanted to say something pleasant to the navigator: it was Mikhail Antonovich
who had first developed and used the theta-algorithm.
Mikhail Antonovich uttered a vague sound. He was pleasantly
embarrassed. Bykov finished looking through the programme, nodded several
times and, putting the sheets aside, rubbed his eyes with his huge freckled
fists.
"Tell you frankly," he said, "I've had a rotten sleep."
"Take some sporamin, Alexei," Mikhail Antonovich said persuasively.
"Look at me-I take a tablet every two hours and don't feel like sleep at
all. So does Vanya. Why should you torture yourself?"
"Hate the stuff," said Bykov. He grunted, jumped up and paced the room.