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

over all the proximity sensors at the same time."

Faraday grimaced. That was standard deep-atmosphere probe design: If there was something sitting
right next to you, the computer wouldn't let you move that direction. Now, with something around
all of them, the whole bank of drive engines had simply shut down. "Damn safety interlocks," he
muttered.

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Manta's Gift


"Well, it's not like we'd be able to go anywhere right now anyway," Chippawa pointed out, his voice
far too reasonable for Faraday's taste. "Firing up the turboprops now would just snarl the blades.
Wait a sec."

He bent suddenly over the controls. "Something?" Faraday asked hopefully.

"Just a thought," the other said. "If I can fine-tune the emscan a little, maybe we can see how thick
the skin is over the other shipwrecks out there."

"Oh," Faraday said, feeling the flicker of hope fade away.

Still, now that Chippawa mentioned it, the view outside did rather look like a shipwreck scene. A
dozen ships lying at the bottom of a murky ocean, with strange underwater seaweed growing up over
all of them. "What do you want me to do?"

"Check the manual and see if there's any way you can boost power to the radio," Chippawa said. "If
we can find a way to punch a signal through this soup, we can at least let Prime know about all this."

He smiled tightly. "I mean, we should at least let them know we're due some posthumous citations."

"Got it," Faraday said. He didn't smile back.

They worked in silence for what seemed like a long time. The only sounds in the cabin were the
beeping of the instruments, the howling of the wind outside, andтАФat least for FaradayтАФthe
thudding of his own heart.

The window was almost completely covered by the time he finally gave up. "We're not going to get
through," he said. "The atmosphere's just too thick. I can't even pick up their carrier; and if I can't
hear them, they sure as hell can't hear us. Any luck there?"

"Possibly," Chippawa said. "The creature's skin in general is pretty thick, up to thirty centimeters in
places. Definitely the same as the wrapping around the mummies out there, though that stuff's not
nearly as thick. But this batchтАФ"

"Wait a sec," Faraday interrupted him. "Mummies?"

"That's what the emscan shows," Chippawa said. "The big one, anyway. It has the same basic
internal structure as the fellow who buzzed us."