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

"And that structure's intact?" Faraday asked. "Not decayed or digested or anything?"

"Not that I can tell," Chippawa said. "That's point one for the good guys: At least we're not about to
be eaten or absorbed alive. Point two is that the batch growing up around the Skydiver isn't nearly as
thick or strong as the rest of it."

He nodded toward the window. "Which means that if the starboard helium line clears up soon
enough, and if we're not too deep for the float to deploy, there's a chance we'll be able to punch our

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Manta's Gift


way out of here."

"Lot of ifs in that," Faraday pointed out doubtfully. An image floated to mind: a Golden Movie Age
vid he and his brothers used to watch called Pinocchio, where the heroes had been trapped in the
stomach of a giant whale. How had they gotten out of that? He couldn't remember. "Assuming all
the rest of it, how do you propose we do that?"

The last remaining sliver of outside view vanished beneath the sheet of brown-gray. "I don't know,"
Chippawa admitted. "Maybe an electric discharge, if we can boost the voltage high enough and
figure out how to deliver it. Or maybe some acid from one of our fuel cells will do something."

"Or maybe a fire," Faraday said. That was it; they'd made a fire in the whale's stomach. "Don't
forget, most of that soup out there is pure hydrogen. If we can supply enough oxygen from our own
air supply, we should be able to get a nice little fire going."

Chippawa whistled softly. "And maybe fry ourselves in the process," he pointed out. "But it's better
than doing nothing. Let's figure out how much we can spareтАФ"

He broke off as, once again, the chairs dropped out from under them. "We're heading down again,"
Faraday said tightly, looking over at the depth indicator.

The indicator, contrary to what his stomach and inner ear were telling him, was holding perfectly
steady. "What theтАФ? Oh. Right."

"It's the pressure of the skin around us," Chippawa said. "Fouls up the readings. Still, at least that
means we're not going to get flattened like roadkill."

"It also means that if we wait too long to punch our way out, we won't be able to do so," Faraday
countered. "Not much point in breaking free if you're only going to get squashed a millisecond
later."

Chippawa made a face. "Yeah. Point."

"And of course, with the depth meter off-track, we won't even know when we've passed that no-
chance depth," Faraday added. "We don't even know how deep we are right now."

"Maybe I can do something with the emscan," Chippawa said. "You get busy and figure out how