"Anderson, Poul - Fleet Of Stars (V2 0)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

Jendaire grinned. "But if naught else," she said, "this speed that Proserpina has gained ought to discomfit the powers that be on Earth."
He must not let himself get carried away. "That's assuming your suspicions of them are warranted," he said. "Right now I frankly don't know. None of us do at Ama-terasu, nor, as far as I can tell, on Isis or Hestia."
"You are Terran," she retorted. "You see things otherwise than we do."
"Uh-huh. Well, you Lunarians may have a good case. I'm here to listen."
Her nostrils flared, her slenderness tautened. ."Then hearken to this. Lunarians are extinct upon Luna."
"Yes, I know from your message, and it did shock us on Amaterasu. It looks as though orbiting that Habitat and encouraging Terrans to move in was deliberate government policy." But there could have been justifications, Guthrie thought. How I do remember what troublemakers Lunarians are apt to be—from a Terran viewpoint, at least. And it isn't as if a pogrom were mounted against them or anything like that. "Nevertheless, my lady, I need to know more. Remember how new I am to this slew of news. What else have the Proserpinans told you, especially while I've been in transit?"
With characteristic swiftness, her mood cooled. "Rather little," she admitted. "They have attempted closer surveillance missions than erstwhile to the inner Solar System, with their field-drive vessels, but the gain has been slight. Those vessels are few as yet, and experience in their use lies mainly futureward. Also, truth to tell, they wish more to employ the capability in expanding outward through the realm of the comets." Her voice dropped to a murmur. "And thus, at last, starward."
Yes, he thought, the Oort Cloud of comets reached so far and far that its outermost fringes mingled with the comet clouds of neighbor suns. You didn't really need downloading and c-ships to go forth into the galaxy. Enduring adventurousness was enough.
"One fine trait you Lunarians have," he remarked. "You don't want conquest or power, at least for their own sweet sakes." Pride and greed could become murderous—he reflected—but as matters for the individual or, at most, for the clan. No Lunarians would ever perpetrate a nation-state.
"But let's just see—" he went on. "Have you yourselves, here at Centauri, improved your spacecraft designs?"
"Nay, little since you evacuated Demeter," she said. "Ey, we have launched robotic exploratory interstellar missions. But we have no cause to send off emigrants. Riches and wonders abundant lie virginal around the Centauri suns." She gazed beyond him. "The more true when shards of Demeter and Phaethon swing ever outward. Lately a prospecting expedition came upon a steel-frame house, ruined but recognizable, cast loose in some unlikely wise and orbiting free...."
His spirit shuddered a bit. Aloud, as calmly as possible: "Okay. You do have a few c-ships. Uh, to make sure we understand each other, by c-ships I mean small field-drive craft with minimal payloads, which can come near light-speed because their mass is so little."
"Yes, that is clear. Like yours. I have wondered whence you took its name."
"From a boyhood hero of mine. Never mind. You must also have a larger number of cruisers of various classes. By that I mean bigger field-drive ships, with considerably more carrying capacity, though they can't manage c-like delta v's."
"We have such. You shall, since you wish it, learn what those classes are and what they can do. I tell you . now, forasmuch as you touched on the matter, we possess none that can bear a load of colonists in cold sleep to a different star, for as said, we have ample frontier close at hand."
Come the time, Guthrie thought, doubtless they would build vessels like that. Probably the duration of a voyage by humans in suspended animation would always be limited to a century or two. If nothing else, beyond that there'd be too much accumulated radiation damage. Inactive DNA couldn't repair it, and while nanotech performed remarkable feats, it was no magic wand. But a hundred Earth-years, or less, was plenty of time to reach nearby stars, given top speeds of a few percent of light's. And Lunarians need go no farther on any single venture. They didn't require planets. What they wanted were asteroids and moons. They lived and reproduced healthily under low gravity, down to no gravity at all.
It was different for Terrans. They had to have a minimum third of a g under them. And, okay, some had settled on Mars; but the tremendous journey to another sun simply wasn't worth the cost unless, at the far end, you could walk out in your shirtsleeves; and worlds where life had arisen to liberate oxygen and nitrogen were sorrowfully rare.
It needn't be like that forever. Someday humans of the Terran kind would make dead planets over from scratch. The task was almost unthinkably huge. Consider the energy spent in those chemical conversions, that grinding of rock into soil and purifying of the waters.... Nature on Earth had taken the better part of a billion years doing it, before the globe was ready for the earliest primitive life. Air had not become humanly breathable for about another billion years, as near as Guthrie remembered. People didn't have that kind of time.... But someday, given sufficient marshaled resources, natural and technological and spiritual, they should be able to start making homes for themselves throughout the galaxy ... at last, throughout the universe.
Someday. They weren't there yet by a long shot. Maybe they'd never get there. Maybe they'd never be allowed to.
His mind had wandered. At electrophotonic speeds, though, it had been gone for only a fraction of a second. "I pretty well expected this, my lady," he said to Jen-daire.
She arched her brows. "What more have you expected, my lord?"
If he had been generating a face-image, he could have grinned at her. He settled for putting cheeriness into his tone.
"I told you, that'll depend on what I discover here about the general situation. But my strong hunch is that I'll try to talk you into providing me with a cruiser, and assorted gear, for my trip on to Sol."
She did not completely mask surprise. "A cruiser? We were prepared to refuel your c-ship, but—but even a light cruiser will take some thirty years for the journey."
"About what I've spent so far. How well I know," he said. "Look, my lady. I've arrived damn near helpless. You can have your men squash me like a cockroach if you'-ve a mind to." Fleetingly: Has she ever heard of cockroaches? "I don't want to reach Sol under the same handicap. I'm hoping you'll see fit to send me on with much more under my belt. That's another reason I've come via Centauri. A cruiser voyage straight from Hydri would've taken ridiculously long."
She stood quiet for a little. He could guess how she was calculating. A thrush trilled, a butterfly zigzagged on gorgeous wings, a breeze bore scent of jasmine, the stars passed frostily by.
"What would you fain do yonder?" she asked low.
"That too will depend on what 1 find out, both here and there," he said. Might as well be honest; it was obvious anyway. "And also on how things work out once I've made the crossing. I swear I'll never actually betray you and your people, my lady. You've been my partners since Rinndalir and I brought down the Avantists and led the exodus. But I can't guarantee you'll like what I attempt. It may be nothing whatsoever, because no good would come of anything. Nor can I guarantee that what I may try will succeed."
It might not even save him from destruction, he thought. But no matter that. Somewhere along the line, every mortal man who wanted to enjoy his life must stare down his mortality. A download felt no such dreads to start with.
"I do promise," he finished, "I'll travel on behalf of all of us amongst the stars."


4

IN TWO HOURS outside, Fenn's party had seen Luna wax from a gigantic crescent to more than half full. Earth's three-quarter phase had changed little, except for its position with respect to the Habitat; blue-and-white luster that had been to starboard of the great cylindroid was now almost aft, blinking in and out of vision as the sails spun across heaven. Hard spatial sunlight overwhelmed all constellations. Any part of a helmet that turned in that direction darkened itself to save the wearer's eyes; he saw a silvery disk slightly speckled with maelstroms, each of which could have swallowed a planet whole.
He’o vectored the thrusts from his jetpack and soared. The specially built, legless spacesuit flashed through an incredible arc. He had taken to EVA like a—a seal to water, Fenn thought. But then, of course, He'o was a seal.
Lokepa Hakawau had acquired about as much competence as a man might be expected to in a short time. That meant he still wallowed clumsily about. His radio voice boomed in his companions' earplugs: "Auwe! Make wai au.''
"Huh?" Fenn grunted. He'd picked up a few words of the Lahui Kuikawa language—human Lahui, that is— during the past fortnight, but only a few.
"Hrach-ch," sounded from He'o. Laughter? The metamorph used his vocal synthesizer to form Anglo: "He means that this has been enough and he is very thirsty." It went slowly, for his voice had nothing like the range of a human's and conversation required an elaborate coding program.
"Yes, by Maui's butt," lokepa growled in the same tongue, heavily though musically accented. "Where's the nearest cold beer?"
Mainly the man was tired out, Fenn realized, but he wouldn't admit it—he, sailor and championship swimmer from the seas of Earth. No disgrace when you weren't trained to maneuver in open space, or weren't born to it as He'o seemed to have been. Nevertheless, Fenn resisted cracking a joke and congratulated himself on curbing his usual brashness. He didn't want to hurt this big, friendly fellow, with whom he had shared such unbounded fun.
"Well, you've gotten your taste of the outside," he said. The rest he must force: "Yes, let's go back in."
He'o glided close, braking, till he had matched velocities and could look through helmets at the boy's face. "You are reluctant," he observed.
Fenn gazed back into the big, liquid-brown eyes behind the muzzle and beneath a brow bulging to hold a human-equivalent brain. Sunlight set sleek fur aglow. He reads me better than lokepa does, Fenn thought. Are the Keiki Moana really as alien as everybody says? I s'pose. But that doesn't mean they can't be simpatico. I guess they've got to be, most of them. How else could they have stayed in company with their humans all these hundreds of years?
"I don't get too many chances for EVA," he confessed. "Uh, thank you both for this one."
"Thank you, makamaka," lokepa interjected from his distance. "You've been the perfect guide."
Maybe more gratitude was due Fenn's father, the boy thought. When this pair out of the Lahui Kuikawa group that had come to investigate the Moon expressed their strongest interest as being in the parks, waters, and wild areas of the interior, it had been natural to refer them to ranger-manager Birger. When he turned them over mainly to his son—well, Elitha muttered with a certain bitterness that it was an act of courtship, but Fenn was overjoyed. The excursions that followed had gone beyond his expectations. For that while, his inward anger had smoldered low, almost forgotten.
It began to burn higher again. “Why, can you not come up here often?" He'o was asking.
"No!" Fenn snapped. He tried for softness. "Not in the past two or three years. I've got my studies, and a ferry ride does cost, and, uh, there're other things that keep me busy on Luna."
"Aye, you showed me," lokepa chuckled. "A grand guide for sure. Mahalo lui noa.''