"John Varley - Gaea 1 - Titan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

PUBIREL DISPATCH #0056 5112125
DSV RINGMASTER (NASA 447D, LS/1, HOUSTON-COPER- NICUS GCR BASELINE)
IONES, CIROCCO, MISCOM
FOR PARAPHRASING AND IMMEDIATE RELEASE BEGINS:
Gaby has settled on Themis as the name for the new moon. Calvin agrees with her, though they
arrived at the name from different directions.
Gaby mentions the alleged sighting of (what would have been) a tenth moon of Saturn by William
Henry Picketing---discoverer of Phoebe, Saturn's outermost moon-in 1905. He named it Themis, and
no one ever saw it again.
Calvin points out that five of the Saturnian moons are already named after the Titans of Creek
myth (which is a special interest of his; see PUBIREL DISPATCH #0009,113124) and a sixth is called
Titan. Themis was a Titan, so Calvin's mind is appeased. Themis has things in common with the moon
Pickering thought he saw, but Gaby is not convinced he actually sighted it. (If he did, she would
not be listed as its discoverer. But to be fair, it seems too small and dim to be seen in even the
best Lunar scopes.)
Gaby is formulating a cataclysmic theory of Themis 'formation, the result of a collision between
Rhea and a wandering asteroid. Themis might be the remnant of that asteroid, or a chunk knocked
off of Rhea itself.
So Themis is proving an interesting challenge for

"--that wonderful gang of idiots you all know so well by now, the crew of the DSV Ringmaster."
Cirocco leaned back from the typer touchplate, stretched her arms over her head, and cracked her
knuckles. "Tripe," she muttered. "Also bullshit."
The green letters glowed on the screen in front of her, still with no period at the bottom.
It was a part of her job she always delayed as long as possible, but the NASA flacks could no
longer be ignored. Themis was an uninteresting chunk of rock, by all indications, but the
publicity department was desperate for something to hang a story on. They also wanted human
interest, "personality journalism," as they called it. Cirocco tried her best, but could not bring
herself to go into the kind of detail the release writers wanted. Which hardly mattered anyway,
since what she had just written would be edited, re-written, discussed in conference, and
generally
jazzed up to "humanize" the astronauts.
Cirocco sympathized with their goal. Few people gave a damn about the space program. They felt the
money could he better spent on Earth, on Luna, and at the LS colonies. Why pour money down the rat-
hole of exploration when there was so much benefit to be derived from things that were established
on a businesslike basis, like Earth-orbital manufacturing? Exploration was terribly expensive, and
there was nothing at Saturn but a lot of rock and vacuum.
She was trying to think of some fresh, new way to justify her presence on the first exploratory
mission in eleven years when a face appeared on her screen. It might have been April, and it might
have been August.
"Captain, I'm sorry to disturb you."
"That's okay. I wasn't busy."
"We have something up here you should see."
"Be right up."
She thought it was August. Cirocco had worked on keeping them straight since twins generally
resent being mistaken for each other. She had gradually realized that April and August didn't
care.
But April and August were not ordinary twins.
Their full names were April 15/02 Polo and August 3/02 Polo. That was what was written on their