（外文电子版资料）Larry Niven - Becalmed In Hell.doc

BECALMED IN HELL Larry Niven Back to Venus, with a difference. This is the astronomical Venus, not the romantic vision of The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth. (But notice the sea images, even in this rationalists view of the Planet of Love.) Like all Lorry Nivens stories, this one is solidly based on present-day science and technology, and it contains a neat, nasty problem: if something goes wrong with a spacecraft whose control system is a Cyborgpart human, part wires and transistorsis the trouble mechanical or psychological? And how do you find out before it kills you? BECALMED IN HELL Larry Niven I could feel the heat hovering outside. In the cabin it was bright and dry and cool, almost too cool, like a modem office building in the dead of the summer. Beyond the two small windows it was as black as it ever gets in the solar system, and hot enough to melt lead, at a pressure equivalent to three hundred feet beneath the ocean. There goes a fish, I said, just to break the monotony. So hows it cooked? Cant tell. It seems to be leaving a trail of breadcrumbs. Fried? Imagine that, Eric! A fried jellyfish. Eric sighed noisily. Do I have to? You have to. Only way youll see anything worthwhile in thisthis Soup? Fog? Boiling maple syrup? Searing black calm. Right. Someone dreamed up that phrase when I was a kid, just after the news of the Mariner II probe. An eternal searing black calm, hot as a kiln, under an atmosphere thick enough to keep any light or any breath of wind from ever reaching th8 surface. I shivered. Whats the outside temperature now? Youd rather not know. Youve always had too much imagination, Howie. I can take it, Doc. Six hundred and twelve degrees. I cant take it, Doc! This was Venus, Planet of Love, favorite of the science-fiction writers of three decades ago. Our ship hung below the Earth- to-Venus hydrogen fuel tank, twenty miles up and all but motionless in the syrupy air. The tank, nearly empty now, made an excellent blimp. It would keep