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

"You hope," Faraday said, tapping a fingernail surreptitiously on the polished myrtlewood finger
ring his mother had given him when he graduated from high school. Not that he was superstitious or
anything; but the image of that bridge twisting and swinging in the breeze as the wind caught it just
right, and eventually coming completely apart, had haunted him ever since he saw it. "They will
keep an eye on it, I presume?"

"What, with two hundred million dollars' worth of equipment on the line?" Chippawa asked, waving
around. "Not to mention you and me?"

"Right." Taking another sip, Faraday gave the status board a quick check. Outside temperature was
still climbing, wind speed was manageable, atmospheric composition was still mostly hydrogen with
a pinch each of helium and methane mixed in. Hull pressure...

He winced and looked away. They were already at twenty bars, the equivalent of nearly two hundred
meters below sea level on Earth.

Two hundred meters was nothing to an Earthbound bathyscaph, of course. But then, an Earthbound
bathyscaph didn't also have to put up with heavy radiation and a magnetic field that could unscrew
the ratchets on a socket wrench.

He'd seen the specs on the Skydiver's design, fine-tuned somewhat since Keefer and O'Reilly had
taken their plunge, and he knew how much pressure it could handle. Even so, the actual raw
numbers still left his stomach feeling a little queasy. He lifted his cup to his lipsтАФ

And at that precise second, something slammed into the side of the probe.

"Sheester's Mother," Chippawa swore, grabbing for the stabilizer controls.

"What was that?" Faraday managed as his coffee tried to go down the wrong tube. Trained reflexes
set in, sending his cup flying as he grabbed at his own controls and checked the emergency board.
No hull breach; no oxygen tank or fuel-cell rupture; no hint of any other equipment malfunction.

"Sheester's Mother," Chippawa repeated, almost reverently this time. Faraday looked upтАФ

And caught his breath. There, floating outside the thick Quadplexi window, squarely in the center of
the probe's external lights, was a two-meter-long solid object. It looked something like a cross
between a dolphin and a very large, very fat manta ray with a pair of long tails trailing behind it.

And as he watched, it rolled over and flapped away through the roiling atmosphere, its twin tails
beating rhythmically at the air. A second later, two more of them swam into view around the sides of
the probe and charged off after the first.

Slowly, Faraday turned to look at Chippawa. Chippawa was looking back at him.


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Manta's Gift

Chippawa said it first. "I guess Keefer wasn't imagining things," he said, his voice studiously casual.