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| 3001 The final Odissey |
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Страница 9 из 91 he looked for it, yet so one-dimensional that the word `thin` could not even be applied. However, it was not completely featureless; there were barely visible spots of greater brilliance at irregular intervals along its length, like drops of water on a spider`s web. Poole continued walking towards the window, and the view expanded until at last he could see what lay below him. It was familiar enough: the whole continent of Europe, and much of northern Africa, just as he had seen them many times from space. So he was in orbit after all -- probably an equatorial one, at a height of at least a thousand kilometres. Indra was looking at him with a quizzical smile. `Go closer to the window,` she said, very softly. `So that you can look straight down. I hope you have a good head for heights.` What a silly thing to say to an astronaut! Poole told himself as he moved forward. If I ever suffered from vertigo, I wouldn`t be in this business... The thought had barely passed through his mind when he cried `My God!` and involuntarily stepped back from the window, Then, bracing himself, he dared to look again. He was looking down on the distant Mediterranean from the face of a cylindrical tower, whose gently curving wall indicated a diameter of several kilometres. But that was nothing compared with its length, for it tapered away down, down, down -- until it disappeared into the mist somewhere over Africa. He assumed that it continued all the way to the surface. `How high are we?` he whispered. `Two thousand kay. But now look upwards.` This time, it was not such a shock: he had expected what he would see. The tower dwindled away until it became a glittering thread against the blackness of space, and he did not doubt that it continued all the way to the geostationary orbit, thirty-six thousand kilometres above the Equator. Such fantasies had been well known in Poole`s day: he had never dreamed he would see the reality -- and be living in it. He pointed towards the distant thread reaching up from the eastern horizon. `That must be another one.` `Yes -- the Asian Tower. We must look exactly the same to them.` `How many are there?` `Just four, equally spaced around the Equator. Africa, Asia, America, Pacifica. The last one`s almost empty -- only a few hundred levels completed. Nothing to see except water...` Poole was still absorbing this stupendous concept when a disturbing thought occurred to him. `There were already thousands of satellites, at all sorts of altitudes, in my time. How do you avoid collisions?` Indra looked slightly embarrassed. `You know -- I never thought about that -- it`s not my field.` She paused for a moment, clearly searching her memory. Then her face brightened. `I believe there was a big clean-up operation, centuries ago. There just aren`t any satellites, below the stationary orbit.` That made sense, Poole told himself. They wouldn`t be needed -- the four gigantic towers could provide all the facilities once provided by thousands of satellites and space-stations. `And there have never been any accidents -- any collisions with spaceships leaving earth, or re-entering the atmosphere?` Indra looked at him with surprise. `But they don`t, any more,` She pointed to the ceiling. `All the spaceports are where they should be -- up there, on the outer ring. I believe it`s four hundred years since the last rocket lifted off from the surface of the Earth.` Poole was still digesting this when a trivial anomaly caught his attention. His training as an astronaut had made him alert to anything out of the ordinary: in space, that might be a matter of life or death. The Sun was out of view, high overhead, but its rays streaming down through the great window painted a brilliant band of light on the floor |
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