"Timothy Zahn - Manta's Gift" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

Manta's Gift


Timothy Zahn

Manta's Gift

For my agent, Russell Galen, who picked Achilles' other choice




PROLOGUE
The Skydiver 7 had been filled with the soft sounds of beeping instruments and the ominous
rumbling of the windstorm outside when Jakob Faraday had finally drifted off to sleep. Now, seven
hours later, the storm was still raging against the probe's thick hull. But a new sound had also been
added to the mix: a low but pervasive humming.

"Welcome back to the edge of the envelope," Scotto Chippawa greeted him as Faraday eased
through the narrow doorway into the cramped control cabin. "Up a little early, aren't we?"

"Couldn't sleep," Faraday said, sliding into his chair beside the older man, listening to the faint
whirring from his power-assist exoskeleton as he awkwardly strapped himself in. The gravity suit
was a supreme nuisance, he'd long ago decided, and not nearly as user-friendly as its designers
probably thought. But moving around down here in Jupiter's two and a half gees would be well-nigh
impossible without it. "How are things going?"

"About the same as when you left," Chippawa said. "The wind's eased up a little, and the
temperature's passed three hundred Kelvin on its way up again. Coffee?"

"Sure," Faraday said. "Double latte, easy on the cinnamon, with double cream."

"Right," Chippawa commented dryly. "Nearest latte's currentlyтАФ" he peered at one of the displays
"тАФa hundred thirty klicks straight up. Help yourself."

"Don't think I'm not tempted," Faraday grunted, swiveling his chair around to the zero-gee coffee pot
in its heating niche behind him. So they'd descended another forty kilometers since he'd toddled off
to bed. That put them well into Jupiter's troposphere, not to mention within striking range of the
record depth Keefer and O'Reilly had made it to last year. "I missed the rest of the cloud layers?"

"Slept right through them," Chippawa said cheerfully. "Don't worry, you'll get to see them again on
the way up."


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Manta's Gift

"Right," Faraday muttered, trying not to think about the hairline cracks the techs had found in Keefer
and O'Reilly's probe after their dive. "I'll look forward to it."