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

satellite probes or Earth-based reconnaissance. Hols had thought it might
be a new phenomenonтАФa lake that had achieved its current size within
the past ten years or so. Burton had thought it would be fun to check it
out. And Martha hadn't cared, so long as she wasn't left behind. So they'd
added the lake to their itinerary.
She had been so transparently eager to be in on the first landing, so
afraid that she'd be left behind, that when she suggested they match
fingers, odd man out, for who stayed, both Burton and Hols had laughed.
"I'll play mother," Hols had said magnanimously, "for the first landing.
Burton for Ganymede and then you for Europa. Fair enough?'' And ruffled
her hair.
She'd been so relieved, and so grateful, and so humiliated too. It was
ironic. Now it looked like HolsтАФwho would never have gotten so far off
course as to go down the wrong side of the StyxтАФwasn't going to get to
touch rock at all. Not this expedition.
"Stupid, stupid, stupid," Martha muttered, though she didn't know if
she were condemning Hols or Burton or herself. Lake Styx was
horse-shoe-shaped and twelve miles long. And she was standing right at
the inner toe of the horseshoe.
 There was no way she could retrace her steps back around the lake and
still get to the lander before her air ran out. The lake was dense enough
that she could almost swim across it, if it weren't for the viscosity of the
sulfur, which would coat her heat radiators and burn out her suit in no
time flat. And the heat of the liquid. And whatever internal flows and
undertows it might have. As it was, the experience would be like drowning
in molasses. Slow and sticky.
She sat down and began to cry.
After a time she began to build up her nerve to grope for the
snap-coupling to her airpack. There was a safety for it, but among those
familiar with the rig it was an open secret that if you held the safety down
with your thumb and yanked suddenly on the coupling, the whole thing
would come undone, emptying the suit in less than a second. The gesture
was so distinctive that hot young astronauts-in-training would mime it
when one of their number said something particularly stupid. It was called
the suicide flick.
There were worse ways of dying.
"Will build. Bridge. Have enough. Fine control of. Physical processes. To
build. Bridge."
"Yeah, right, very nice, you do that," Martha said absently. If you can't
be polite to your own hallucinations ... She didn't bother finishing the
thought. Little crawly things were creeping about on the surface of her
skin. Best to ignore them.
"Wait. Here. Rest. Now."
She said nothing but only sat, not resting. Building up her courage.
Thinking about everything and nothing. Clutching her knees and rocking
back and forth.
Eventually, without meaning to, she fell asleep.

"Wake. Up. Wake. Up. Wake. Up."
"Uhh?"