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| 3001 The final Odissey |
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Страница 8 из 91 he came to a sudden halt, shocked because he had not realized something so blindingly obvious. `This space-station must be enormous!` he exclaimed. Indra smiled back at him. `Didn`t you have a saying -- "You ain`t seen anything yet"?` `"Nothing",` he corrected, absent-mindedly. He was still trying to estimate the scale of this structure when he had another surprise. Who would have imagined a space-station large enough to boast a subway -- admittedly a miniature one, with a single small coach capable of seating only a dozen passengers. `Observation Lounge Three,` ordered Indra, and they drew silently and swiftly away from the terminal. Poole checked the time on the elaborate wrist-band whose functions he was still exploring. One minor surprise had been that the whole world was now on Universal Time: the confusing patchwork of Time Zones had been swept away by the advent of global communications There had been much talk of this, back in the twenty-first century, and it had even been suggested that Solar should be replaced by Sidereal Time. Then, during the course of the year, the Sun would move right round the clock: setting at the time it had risen six months earlier. However, nothing had come of this `Equal time in the Sun` proposal -- or of even more vociferous attempts to reform the calendar. That particular job, it had been cynically suggested, would have to wait for somewhat major advances in technology. Some day, surely, one of God`s minor mistakes would be corrected, and the Earth`s orbit would be adjusted, to give every year twelve months of thirty exactly equal days. As far as Poole could judge by speed and elapsed time, they must have travelled at least three kilometres before the vehicle came to a silent stop, the doors opened, and a bland autovoice intoned, `Have a good view. Thirty-five per cent cloud-cover today.` At last, thought Poole, we`re getting near the outer wall. But here was another mystery -- despite the distance he had gone, neither the strength nor the direction of gravity had altered! He could not imagine a spinning space-station so huge that the gee-vector would not be changed by such a displacement... could he really be on some planet after all? But he would feel lighter -- usually much lighter -- on any other habitable world in the Solar System. When the outer door of the terminal opened, and Poole found himself entering a small airlock, he realized that he must indeed be in space. But where were the spacesuits? He looked around anxiously: it was against all his instincts to be so close to vacuum, naked and unprotected. One experience of that was enough... `We`re nearly there,` said Indra reassuringly. The last door opened, and he was looking out into the utter blackness of space, through a huge window that was curved both vertically and horizontally. He felt like a goldfish in its bowl, and hoped that the designers of this audacious piece of engineering knew exactly what they were doing. They certainly possessed better structural materials than had existed in his time. Though the stars must be shining out there, his light-adapted eyes could see nothing but black emptiness beyond the curve of the great window. As he started to walk towards it to get a wider view, Indra restrained him and pointed straight ahead. `Look carefully,` she said `Don`t you see it-` Poole blinked, and stared into the night. Surely it must be an illusion -- even, heaven forbid, a crack in the window... He moved his head from side to side. No, it was real. But what could it be? He remembered Euclid`s definition `A lie has length, but no thickness`. For spanning the whole height of the window, and obviously continuing out of sight above and below, was a thread of light quite easy to see when |
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