[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
orders."
Yefremov looked sick now; the mask had crumbled.
"Fine sport," he said. "Wait here until it's over."
Then Tatjana's Soyuz struck the beam installation and the barracks ring. In a
split-second daguerreotype of raw sunlight, Korolev saw the gun room wrinkle
and collapse like a beer can crushed under a boot; he saw the decapitated
torso of a soldier spinning away from a con-
sole; he saw Yefremov try to speak, his hair streaming upright as vacuum tore
the air in his suit out through his open helmet ring. Fine twin streams of
blood arced from Korolev's nostrils, the roar of escaping air re-
placed by a deeper roaring in his head.
The last thing Korolev remembered hearing was the hatch door slamming shut.
When he woke, he woke to darkness, to pulsing agony behind his eyes,
remembering old lectures. This was as great a danger as the blowout itself,
nitrogen bubbling through the blood to strike with white-hot, crippling
Page 42
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
pain...
But it was all so remote, so academic, really. He turned the wheels of the
hatches out of some strange sense of noblesse oblige, nothing more. The labor
was quite onerous, and he wished very much to return to the museum and sleep.
file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/Burning%20Chrome.txt (47 of 105) [1/14/03 11:20:24
PM]
file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/Burning%20Chrome.txt
He could repair the leaks with caulk, but the systems crash was beyond him. He
had Glushko's garden. With the vegetables and algae, he wouldn't starve or
smother.
The communications module had gone with the gun room and the barracks ring,
sheared from the station by the impact of Tatjana's suicidal Soyuz. He assumed
that the collision had perturbed Kosmograd's orbit, but he had no way of
predicting the hour of the station's final incandescent meeting with the upper
atmosphere. He was often ill now, and he often thought that he might die
before burnout, which disturbed him.
He spent uncounted hours screening the museum's library of tapes. A fitting
pursuit for the Last Man in
Space who had once been the First Man on Mars.
He became obsessed with the icon of Gagarin, endlessly rerunning the grainy
television images of the
Sixties, the newsreels that led so unalterably to the cosmonaut's death. The
stale air of Kosmograd swam with the spirits of martyrs. Gagarin, the first
Salyut crew, the Americans roasted alive in their squat Apollo...
Often he dreamed of Tatjana, the look in her eyes like the look he'd imagined
in the eyes of the museum's portraits. And once he woke, or dreamed he woke,
in the Salyut where she had slept, to find himself in his old uniform, with a
battery-powered work light strapped across his forehead. From a great
distance, as though he watched a newsreel on the museum's monitor, he saw
himself rip the Star of the Tsiolkovsky Order from his pocket and staple it to
her pilot's certificate.
When the knocking came, he knew that it must be a dream as well.
The hatch wheeled open.
In the bluish, flickering light from the old film, he saw that the woman was
black. Long corkscrews of matted hair rose like cobras around her head. She
wore goggles, a silk aviator's scarf twisting behind her in free fall. "Andy,"
she said in English, "you better come see this!"
A small, muscular man, nearly bald, and wearing only a jockstrap and a
jangling toolbelt, floated up behind her and peered in. "Is he alive?"
"Of course I am alive," said Korolev in slightly ac-
cented English.
The man called Andy sailed in over her head. "You okay, Jack?" His right bicep
was tattooed with a geodesic balloon above crossed lightning bolts and bore
the legend SUNSPARK 15, UTAH. "We weren't expecting anybody."
"Neither was I," said Korolev, blinking.
"We've come to live here," said the woman, drift-
ing closer.
"We're from the balloons. Squatters, I guess you could say. Heard the place
was empty. You know the orbit's decaying on this thing?" The man executed a
clumsy midair somersault, the tools clattering on his belt. "This free fall's
outrageous."
"God," said the woman, "I just can't get used to it! It's wonderful. It's like
skydiving, but there's no wind."
Korolev stared at the man, who had the blundering, careless look of someone
drunk on freedom since birth.
file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/Burning%20Chrome.txt (48 of 105) [1/14/03 11:20:24
PM]
Page 43
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file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/Burning%20Chrome.txt
"But you don't even have a launchpad," he said.
"Launchpad?" the man said, laughing. "What we do, we haul these surplus
booster engines up the cables to the balloons, drop `em, and fire `em in
midair."
"That's insane," Korolev said.
"Got us here, didn't it?"
Korolev nodded. If this was all a dream, it was a very peculiar one. "I am
Colonel Yuri Vasilevich Koro-
1ev."
"Mars!" The woman clapped her hands. "Wait'll the kids hear that." She plucked
the little Lunokhod moon-rover model from the bulkhead and began to wind it.
"Hey," the man said, "I gotta work. We got a bunch of boosters outside. We
gotta lift this thing before it starts burning." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl rafalstec.xlx.pl
orders."
Yefremov looked sick now; the mask had crumbled.
"Fine sport," he said. "Wait here until it's over."
Then Tatjana's Soyuz struck the beam installation and the barracks ring. In a
split-second daguerreotype of raw sunlight, Korolev saw the gun room wrinkle
and collapse like a beer can crushed under a boot; he saw the decapitated
torso of a soldier spinning away from a con-
sole; he saw Yefremov try to speak, his hair streaming upright as vacuum tore
the air in his suit out through his open helmet ring. Fine twin streams of
blood arced from Korolev's nostrils, the roar of escaping air re-
placed by a deeper roaring in his head.
The last thing Korolev remembered hearing was the hatch door slamming shut.
When he woke, he woke to darkness, to pulsing agony behind his eyes,
remembering old lectures. This was as great a danger as the blowout itself,
nitrogen bubbling through the blood to strike with white-hot, crippling
Page 42
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
pain...
But it was all so remote, so academic, really. He turned the wheels of the
hatches out of some strange sense of noblesse oblige, nothing more. The labor
was quite onerous, and he wished very much to return to the museum and sleep.
file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/Burning%20Chrome.txt (47 of 105) [1/14/03 11:20:24
PM]
file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/Burning%20Chrome.txt
He could repair the leaks with caulk, but the systems crash was beyond him. He
had Glushko's garden. With the vegetables and algae, he wouldn't starve or
smother.
The communications module had gone with the gun room and the barracks ring,
sheared from the station by the impact of Tatjana's suicidal Soyuz. He assumed
that the collision had perturbed Kosmograd's orbit, but he had no way of
predicting the hour of the station's final incandescent meeting with the upper
atmosphere. He was often ill now, and he often thought that he might die
before burnout, which disturbed him.
He spent uncounted hours screening the museum's library of tapes. A fitting
pursuit for the Last Man in
Space who had once been the First Man on Mars.
He became obsessed with the icon of Gagarin, endlessly rerunning the grainy
television images of the
Sixties, the newsreels that led so unalterably to the cosmonaut's death. The
stale air of Kosmograd swam with the spirits of martyrs. Gagarin, the first
Salyut crew, the Americans roasted alive in their squat Apollo...
Often he dreamed of Tatjana, the look in her eyes like the look he'd imagined
in the eyes of the museum's portraits. And once he woke, or dreamed he woke,
in the Salyut where she had slept, to find himself in his old uniform, with a
battery-powered work light strapped across his forehead. From a great
distance, as though he watched a newsreel on the museum's monitor, he saw
himself rip the Star of the Tsiolkovsky Order from his pocket and staple it to
her pilot's certificate.
When the knocking came, he knew that it must be a dream as well.
The hatch wheeled open.
In the bluish, flickering light from the old film, he saw that the woman was
black. Long corkscrews of matted hair rose like cobras around her head. She
wore goggles, a silk aviator's scarf twisting behind her in free fall. "Andy,"
she said in English, "you better come see this!"
A small, muscular man, nearly bald, and wearing only a jockstrap and a
jangling toolbelt, floated up behind her and peered in. "Is he alive?"
"Of course I am alive," said Korolev in slightly ac-
cented English.
The man called Andy sailed in over her head. "You okay, Jack?" His right bicep
was tattooed with a geodesic balloon above crossed lightning bolts and bore
the legend SUNSPARK 15, UTAH. "We weren't expecting anybody."
"Neither was I," said Korolev, blinking.
"We've come to live here," said the woman, drift-
ing closer.
"We're from the balloons. Squatters, I guess you could say. Heard the place
was empty. You know the orbit's decaying on this thing?" The man executed a
clumsy midair somersault, the tools clattering on his belt. "This free fall's
outrageous."
"God," said the woman, "I just can't get used to it! It's wonderful. It's like
skydiving, but there's no wind."
Korolev stared at the man, who had the blundering, careless look of someone
drunk on freedom since birth.
file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/Burning%20Chrome.txt (48 of 105) [1/14/03 11:20:24
PM]
Page 43
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/Burning%20Chrome.txt
"But you don't even have a launchpad," he said.
"Launchpad?" the man said, laughing. "What we do, we haul these surplus
booster engines up the cables to the balloons, drop `em, and fire `em in
midair."
"That's insane," Korolev said.
"Got us here, didn't it?"
Korolev nodded. If this was all a dream, it was a very peculiar one. "I am
Colonel Yuri Vasilevich Koro-
1ev."
"Mars!" The woman clapped her hands. "Wait'll the kids hear that." She plucked
the little Lunokhod moon-rover model from the bulkhead and began to wind it.
"Hey," the man said, "I gotta work. We got a bunch of boosters outside. We
gotta lift this thing before it starts burning." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]