"Dafydd ab Hugh, Brad Linaweawer DOOM: Hell on Earth (english)" - читать интересную книгу автора

eighty points better than zero."
We got busy. We drank water. We ate a last good
meal of biscuits, cheese, fruit, nuts. The Eskimos say
that food is sleep, by which I guess they mean if your
body can't get one kind of recharge, you might as well
take the other.
Arlene abandoned me to work out the telemetry
program that would (God willing) launch us, kill
Deimos's orbital velocity, dropping us into the atmos-
phere, then take us down, at which point she'd hand
over control to me to find a suitable spot to touch
down. Fortunately, it was basically cut-and-paste; I
doubt she could have written it from scratch . . . not
in the condition she was in. The hand of God must
have graced her, though she'd never admit it, for her
to keep it together long enough to patch it together.
As we prepared to leave, I kept running the basic
worries through my mind. The mail tubes were de-
signed for Mars, which has only a fraction the atmos-
phere of Earth and a much lower gravity; the specific
impulse developed by the rockets might not be
enough to overcome Earth's gravity as we spilled
velocity and tried to land. On the other hand, the
thick atmosphere might cause so much friction that
our little ship would burn up.
The launcher was a superconducting rail gun. Re-
minded me of the eight-loop wonder at the amuse-
ment park back in the Midwest. This time I hoped I
wouldn't throw up. At least this piece of equipment
didn't have an auxiliary chain ... so what was there
to worry about?
I grunted the launcher around to point opposite
Deimos's orbital path. The rocket controls were sim-
ple to operate, thank God; throttle, stick, various
navigational gear that I didn't really understand, and
environmental controls, all ranged around my face in
a tremendously uncomfortable position.
Then suddenly, a few hours before our scheduled
departure, Arlene totally freaked out.
At first I thought she was joking. She strolled up to
me and said, "Don't try to fool me; I know what you
really are."
"Yeah, a prize SOB," I said distractedly. A moment
later I was on my butt with Arlene's boot on my chest
and a shivЧa sharpened piece of metalЧagainst my
throat. Looking into her eyes, I saw the blank look of a
zombie . . . and for a moment, Jesus, I thought they'd
somehow gotten her, reworked her!
But it was just the low pressure, or maybe slow
oxygen deprivation. I talked to her for five minutes