"Stanley G. Weinbaum - Flight on Titan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

per cent of the value."
 "Tim, shall we have to insure these? How shall we ever manage?"
"We won't. We won't insure these because we'll be going with 'em."
"But if they're lost?"
"If they're lost, Diane, insurance wouldn't help us, because, then, we'll be lost, too."
Three more months dragged by. Their little hoard of flame-orchids reached fifteen, then eighteen.
They realized, of course, that the gem wouldn't command the fabulous price of that first one, but half that
price, even a tenth of it, meant wealth, meant leisure and luxury. It was worth the year of sacrifice.
Titan swung endlessly about its primary. Nine-hour days succeeded nine-hour nights of unbelievable
ferocity. The eternal wind howled and bit and tore, and the shifting ice mountains heaved and roared
under Saturn's tidal drag.
Sometimes, during the day, the pair ventured into the open, fought the boisterous winds, dung
precariously to frigid slopes. Once Diane was swept bodily away, saving herself miraculously on the
verge of one of the deep and mysterious crevasses that bounded their mountain slope, and thereafter they
were very catitious.
Once they dared to penetrate the grove of rubbery and elastic whiplash trees that grew in the shelter
of the nearest cliff. The things lashed out at them with resounding strokes, not violent enough to fell them,
but stinging sharply even through the inch-thick layer of sponge rubber that insulated their bodies from the
cold.
And every seven and a half days the wind died to a strange and oddly silent calm, was still for half an
hour or so, and then roared with renewed ferocity from the opposite direction. Thus it marked Titan's
revolution.
At almost equal intervals, every eight days, the native appeared with the clock. The creature seemed
unable to master the intricate problem of winding it and always presented it mournfully, brightening at
once as Diane set it ticking again.
There was one impending event that worried Tim at times. Twice in its thirty-year period Saturn
eclipses the Sun, and for four Titanian days, seventy-two hours, Titan is in utter darkness. The giant
planet was nearing that point now and would reach it long before the rocket ship, speeding from the
Earth at perigee, was due.
Human occupation dated back only six years; no one knew what four days of darkness might do to
the little world of Titan.
The absolute zero of space? Probably not, because of the dense and xenon-rich atmosphere, but
what storms, what titanic upheavals of ice, might accompany that night of eclipse? Glowing Saturn itself
supplied a little heat, of course, about a third as much as the distant Sun.
Well, worry was futile. Tim glanced at Diane, mending a rip in the furry face-mask of her outdoor
garment, and suggested a stroll. "A stroll in the sunlight," he phrased it sardonically. It was August back
on Earth.
Diane agreed. She always agreed, cheerfully and readily. Without her this project would have been
utterly unbearable, and be wondered amazedly how Simonds had stood it, how those others scattered
around Titan's single little continent were standing it. He sighed, slipped into this thick garment, and
opened the door into the roaring hell outside.
That was the time they came near disaster. They crawled, crept, and struggled their way into the lee
of an ice hummock, and stood there panting and gasping for a moment's rest. Tim raised his head to peer
over the crest and saw through his visor's protecting goggles something unique in his experience on Titan.
He frowned at it through the dense refractive air of the planet; it was hard to judge distances when the
atmosphere made everything quiver like heat waves.
"Look, Di!" he exclaimed. "A bird!"
It did look like one, sailing on the wind toward them, wings outspread. It grew larger; it was as large
as a pterodactyl, bearing down on them with the force of that hundred-mile wind behind it. Tim could
make out a fierce, three-foot beak.