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

There had to be a way. No one doubted Themis was an artifact. The debate concerned whether it was an interstellar space vehicle or an artificial world, like O'Nell One. The differences were movement and origin. A spaceship would have an engine, and it would be at the hub. A colony would have been built by somebody close at hand. Cirocco had heard theories that included inhabitants of Saturn or Titan, Martians--though no one had found so much as a flint arrowhead on Mars-and ancient space- faring races from the Earth. She didn't believe any of them, but it hardly mattered. Ship or colony, Themis had been built by someone, and there would be a door.
The place to look was the hub, but the constraints of ballistics forced her to orbit as far from the hub as she could get.

Ringmaster settled into a circular orbit 400 kilometers above the equator. They traveled in the direction of spin, but Themis turned faster than their orbital speed. It was a black plane outside Cirocco's window. At regular intervals one of the solar panels would sweep by like the wing of a monstrous bat.
Some details could now be seen on the outer surface. There were long, puckered ridges that converged on the solar panels, presumably covering huge pipes to carry a fluid or gas to be warmed by the sun. Scattered widely in the darkness were a few craters, some of them 400 meters deep. There was no rubble scattered around them. Nothing could stay on the outer surface of Themis that wasn't fastened down.
Cirocco locked her control board. At her elbow, Bill nodded in his couch, asleep. The two of them had not left CONMOD in two days.
She moved through SCIMOD like a sleepwalker. Somewhere down there was a bed with soft sheets and a pillow, and a comfortable quarter gee now that the carousel was turning again.

"Rocky, we've got something strange here."
She stopped with one foot on the ladder of D Spoke, stood very still for a moment.
"What did you say?" The edge in her voice made Gaby look up.
"I'm tired, too," she said, irritably. She palmed a switch, and an image appeared on the overhead screen.
it was a view of the approaching edge of Themis. There was a swelling on it that seemed to grow larger as it caught up with them.
"That wasn't there before." Cirocco's brow furrowed as she tried to shake off the exhaustion.
A buzzer sounded faintly and for a moment she could not place it. Then things became sharp and clear as adrenalin ate the cobwebs. It was the radar alarm in CONMOD.
"Captain," Bil,1 said over the speaker, "I've got a strange reading here. We're not getting closer to Themis, but something's getting closer to us."
"I'll be there." Her hands felt like ice as she grabbed a stanch- ion to swing herself up. She glanced at the screen. The object exploded. It looked like a starburst, and it was growing.
"I can see it now," Gaby said. "It's still attached to Themis. It's like a long arm or a boom, and it's opening out. I think-"
"The docking facilities!" Cirocco yelled. "They're gonna grab us! Bill, start the engine sequence, stop the carousel, get ready to move."
"But it'll take us thirty minutes-"
"I know. Move!"
She caromed off the viewport and into her seat, reached for her microphone.
"All hands. Emergency status. Depressurization alert. Evacuate the carousel. Acceleration stations. Strap in." She slammed the alarm button with her left hand and heard the eerie hooting begin in the room behind her. She glanced to her left.
"You too, Bill. Get suited."
"But-"
"Now!"
He was out of his seat and diving through the access hatch. She turned and called over her shoulder.
"Bring my suit back with you!"
The object was visible out the window now, approaching fast. She had never felt so helpless. By overriding the attitude control system's programing she was able to fire all the thrusters on the side of the ship facing Themis, but it was not nearly enough. The great mass of Ringmaster barely moved. Other than that, she could only sit and monitor the automatic engine sequencing and count the seconds as they dragged by. In a short time she knew they could not escape. That thing was big, and moving faster.
Bill appeared, suited, and she scrambled into SCIMOD to don her own suit. Five anonymous figures sat belted to acceleration couches, not moving, staring at the screen. She clamped her helmet, and heard chaos.
"Quiet down." The chatter died away. "I want silence on the suit channel unless 1 ask you to speak."
"But what's happening, Commander?" It was Calvin's voice.
"I said no talking. It looks like an automatic device is going to pick us up. This must he the docking facilities we were looking for."
"It looks more like an attack to me," August muttered. "They must have done this before. They must know how to do it safely." She wished she could convince herself of that. it didn't help her credibility when the whole ship shuddered.
"Contact," Bill said. "It's got us."
Cirocco hurried back to her station, just in time to miss seeing the grapple sweep over them. The ship jumped again, and awful noises came from the rear.
"What did it look like?"
"Great big octopus tentacles without the suckers." He sounded shaken. "Tthere were hundreds of them, waving around all over."
The ship gave an even greater lurch, and more alarms began to sound. A firestorm of red lights spread across her controls.
"We've got a hull rupture," Cirocco said, with a calmness she did not feel. "Losing air from the central stem. Sealing off pres- sure doors 14 and IS." He hands moved over the controls with- out conscious guidance. The lights and buttons were far away, seen through the wrong end of a telescope. The accelerometer dial began to spin as she was thrown violently forward, then to the side. She came to rest on top of Bill, then struggled back to her scat and strapped in.
When the buckle clicked around her waist the ship jerked backwards again, worse than before. Something came through the hatch behind her and hit the viewport, which developed a network of cracks.
She hung from her seat, her body straining forward against the belt. An oxygen cylinder flew through the hatch. The glass shattered and the sound of the impact was sucked away with the burst of cold, hard glass knives that turned and dwindled before her eyes. Everything in the cabin that wasn't tied down leaped up and hurtled through the mouth of jagged teeth that had once been a viewport.
Blood pulsed in her face as she hung above a bottomless black hole. Large objects turned lazily in the sunlight. One of them was the engine module of Ringmaster, out there in front of her where it had no right to be. She could see the broken stump of the connecting stem. Her ship was coming apart.
"Oh, shit," she said, then had a vivid recollection of a tape she had once beard from the flight recorder of an airliner. That had been the last word the pilot had uttered, seconds before impact, when he knew he was going to die. She knew it, too, and the thought filled her with a vast disgust.
She watched in dull horror as the thing that had the engines wrapped more tentacles around it. it reminded her of a Portuguese man o' way with a fish snared in its poisonous grip. A fuel tank ruptured---soundlessly, with a strange beauty. Her world was coming apart with no noise to mark its passing. A cloud of compressed gas quickly dispersed. The thing did not seem to mind.
Other tentacles had other parts of the ship. The high-gain antenna almost seemed to be swimming away, but it moved too slowly as it tumbled down the well below her.
"Alive," she whispered. "It's alive."
"What did you say?" Bill was trying to hold himself secure with both hands m the instrument panel. He was strapped solidly to his chair, but the bolts which held it to the floor had broken.
The ship shuddered again, and Cirocco's chair came free. The
edge of the panel caught her across the thighs and she cried out as she struggled to free herself.