"Michael Swanwick - The Very Pulse Of The Machine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

undergone her surface training. Only without the impact craters. No
impact craters on Io. Least cratered solid body in the solar system. All that
volcanic activity deposited a new surface one meter thick every
millennium or so. The whole damned moon was being constantly repaved.
Her mind was rambling. She checked her gauges, and muttered, "Let's
get this show on the road."
There was no reply.
Dawn would comeтАФwhen? Let's work this out. Io's "year," the time it
took to revolve about Jupiter, was roughly forty-two hours fifteen minutes.
She'd been walking seven hours. During which Io would've moved roughly
sixty degrees through its orbit. So it would be dawn soon. That would
make Daedalus's plume less obvious, but with her helmet graphics that
wouldn't be a worry. Martha swiveled her neck, making sure that
Daedalus and Jupiter were where they ought to be, and kept on walking.

Trudge, trudge, trudge. Try not to throw the map up on the visor every
five minutes. Hold off as long as you can, just one more hour, okay, that's
good, and another two miles. Not too shabby.
The sun was getting high. It would be noon in another hour and a half.
Which meantтАФwell, it really didn't mean much of anything.
Rock up ahead. Probably a silicate. It was a solitary six meters high
brought here by who knew what forces and waiting who knew how many
thousands of years just for her to come along and need a place to rest. She
found a flat spot where she could lean against it, and, breathing heavily,
sat down to rest. And think. And check the air-pack. Four hours until she
had to change it again. Bringing her down to two airpacks. She had
slightly under twenty-four hours now. Thirty-five miles to go. That was
less than two miles an hour. A snap. Might run a little tight on oxygen
there toward the end, though. She'd have to take care she didn't fall
asleep. Oh, how her body ached.
It ached almost as much as it had in the '48 Olympics, when she'd taken
the bronze in the women's marathon. Or that time in the internationals in
Kenya when she'd come up from behind to tie for second. Story of her life.
Always in third place, fighting for second. Always flight crew and
sometimes, maybe, landing crew, but never the commander. Never class
president. Never king of the hill. Just onceтАФonce!тАФshe wanted to be Neil
Armstrong.
Click.
"The marble index of a mind forever. Voyaging through strange seas of
thought, alone. Wordsworth."
"What?"
"Jupiter's magnetosphere is the largest thing in the solar system. If the
human eye could see it, it would appear two and a half times wider in the
sky than the sun does."
"I knew that," she said, irrationally annoyed.
"Quotation is. Easy. Speech is. Not."
"Don't speak, then."
"Trying. To communicate!" She shrugged.
"So go aheadтАФcommunicate."
Silence. Then, "What does. This. Sound like?"