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

He went through the unnecessarily complicated routine of drawing a cup of coffee from the zero-gee
pot into his zero-gee mug. Another supreme nuisance, but one they also had no choice but to put up
with. The Jovian atmosphere was about as calm and peaceful as one of the Five Hundred's budgeting
sessions, and the pixel-pickers on Jupiter Prime got very upset when their glorified babysitters
spilled coffee on expensive electronics.

Especially given the current funding battles the Jupiter Sector was having back on Earth. The Five
Hundred, that oligarchy of the rich and powerful who effectively ran the Solar System, were
constantly pushing humanity's boundaries outward, pressing on to new frontiers almost before the
homesteading stakes had been driven into the ground of the last hard-fought conquest. With their
attention now turned to new colonization efforts on Saturn's moons, Jupiter's interests and struggles
were starting to get lost in the shuffle.

"By the way, Prime won't like it if they find out you shaved an hour off your sleep period,"
Chippawa commented. "They're very strict about the eight-hour rule."

"What was I supposed to do?" Faraday countered, sipping carefully at the brew. Fortunately, there
wasn't a lot even Chippawa could do to ruin instant coffee. "Just lie there and stare at the ceiling?"

"Sure," Chippawa said with a power-assisted shrug. "That's what the rest of us do."

Faraday sniffed. "I guess I'm just too young and idealistic to sluff off that way when there's work to
be done."

"Of course," Chippawa said. "I keep forgetting."

"It's that old-age thing," Faraday added soothingly. Chippawa was, after all, nearly fifty. "Memory
always goes first."

"Yes, but at least I sleep well," Chippawa said pointedly.

Faraday grimaced. "It always feels like there's a sumo wrestler sitting on my chest whenever I lie
down," he said. "I just can't sleep on these things."

"You'll get used to it," Chippawa assured him. "Somewhere around your fifth or sixth tether ride."

"If I last that long," Faraday said. "When did we pick up that humming noise?"

"About two hours ago," Chippawa said. "Prime thinks it's the wind hitting some sort of resonance
with the tether."

Involuntarily, Faraday glanced up at the cabin ceiling. "Terrific," he said. "You ever hear of the
Tacoma-Narrows Bridge?"


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Manta's Gift

"I took the same physics courses you did," Chippawa reminded him. "Saw the same old vids, too.
But this isn't that same kind of resonance."