"Robert F. Young - Goddess in Granite" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

Marten closed the curtain, but it was some time before the after-image of
the memory faded away. When it finally did so, he found that he was staring
with a rather frightening fixity toward the distant cliff of the VirginтАЩs
chin.
Roughly, he estimated its height. Its point, or summit, was on an
approximate level with the crest of the cheek. That gave him 11,000 feet. To
obtain the distance he had to climb to reach the face-mesa, all he had to do
was to deduct the height of the neck-ridge. He figured the neck-ridge at about
8,000 feet; 8,000 from 11,000 gave him 3,000тАФ3,000 feet!
It was impossible. Even with the piton pistol, it was impossible. The pitch
was vertical all the way, and from where he sat he couldnтАЩt discern the
faintest indication of a crack or a ledge on the granite surface.
He could never do it, he told himself. Never. It would be absurd for him
even to try. It might cost him his life. And even if he could do it, even if
he could climb that polished precipice all the way to the face-mesa, could he
get back down again? True, his piton pistol would make the descent relatively
easy, but would he have enough strength left? The atmosphere on Alpha Virginis
IX thinned rapidly after 10,000 feet, and while oxygen tablets helped, they
could keep you going only for a limited period of time. After thatтАФ
But the arguments were old ones. He had used them on himself a hundred, a
thousand times. . . . He stood up resignedly. He shrugged his pack into place.
He took a final look down the nine-mile slope of the arm to the
giantess-fingers jutting into the sea, then he turned and started across the
tableland of the upper chest toward the beginning of the neck-ridge.

II

The sun had long since passed its meridian when he came opposite the gentle
col between the mountains. A cold wind breathed down the slopes, drifting
across the tableland. The wind was sweet, and he knew there must be flowers on
the mountainsтАФcrocuses, perhaps, or their equivalent, growing high on the
snow-soft peaks.
He wondered why he did not want to climb the mountains, why it had to be
the mesa. The mountains presented the greater difficulties and therefore the
greater challenge. Why, then, did he neglect them for the mesa?
He thought he knew. The beauty of the mountains was shallow, lacked the
deeper meaning of the beauty of the mesa. They could never give him what he
wanted if he climbed them a thousand times. It was the mesaтАФwith its blue and
lovely lakesтАФor nothing.
He turned his eyes away from the mountains and concentrated on the long
slope that led to the neck-ridge. The pitch was gentle but treacherous. He
moved slowly. A slip could send him rolling, and there was nothing he could
grasp to stop himself. He noticed the shortness of his breath and wondered at
it, till he remembered the altitude. But he did not break into his oxygen
tablets yet; he would have a much more poignant need for them later.
By the time he reached the ridge, the sun had half completed its afternoon
journey. But he wasnтАЩt dismayed. He had already given up the idea of
assaulting the chin-cliff today. He had been presumptuous in the first place
to have imagined himself capable of conquering the Virgin in a single day.
It was going to take at least two.