"Roger Zelazny - The Doors of His Face The Lamps of His Mouth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

head.

I leaned forward. Feelings played flopdoodle in my guts. I knew every
bloody inch of the big raft, but the feelings you once took for granted
change when their source is out of reach. Truthfully, I'd had my doubts I'd
ever board the hulk again. But now, now I could almost believe in
predestination. There it was!

A tensquare football field of a ship. A-powered. Flat as a pancake,
except for the plastic blisters in the middle and the "Rooks" fore and aft,
port and starboard.

The Rook towers were named for their corner positions--and any two can
work together to hoist, co-powering the graffles between them. The
graffles--half gaff, half grapple--can raise enormous weights to near water
level; their designer had only one thing in mind, though, which accounts for
the gaff half. At water level, the Slider has to implement elevation for six
to eight feet before the graffles are in a position to push upward, rather
than pulling.

The Slider, essentially, is a mobile room--a big box capable of moving
in any of Tensquare's crisscross groovings and "anchoring" on the strike
side by means of a powerful electromagnetic bond. Its winches could hoist a
battleship the necessary distance, and the whole craft would tilt, rather
than the Slider come loose, if you want any idea of the strength of that
bond.

The Slider houses a section operated control indicator which is the
most sophisticated "reel" ever designed. Drawing broadcast power from the
generator beside the center blister, it is connected by shortwave with the
sonar room, where the movements of the quarry are recorded and repeated to
the angler seated before the section control.

The fisherman might play his "lines" for hours, days even, without
seeing any more than metal and an outline on the screen. Only when the beast
is graffled and the extensor shelf, located twelve feet below waterline,
slides out for support and begins to aid the winches, only then does the
fisherman see his catch rising before him like a fallen Seraph. Then, as
Davits learned, one looks into the Abyss itself and is required to act. He
didn't, and a hundred meters of unimaginable tonnage, undernarcotized and


file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Ro...%20Face%20The%20Lamps%20of%20His%20Mouth.txt (5 of 28) [10/16/2004 5:20:30 PM]
 file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Roger%20Zelazny%20-%...20Doors%20of%20His%20Face%20The%20Lamps%20of%20His%20Mouth.txt

hurting, broke the cables of the winch, snapped a graffle, and took a
half-minute walk across Tensquare.

We circled till the mechanical flag took notice and waved us on down.
We touched beside the personnel hatch and I jettisoned my gear and jumped to