"Joe Haldeman - The Coming" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

He looked around the neat office. "You have someone in?"
She laughed. "I've been tidying. Waiting for a longer parallax verification."
"Parallax, yeah, Relax. Sit down, you make me nervous." He gestured at the wallscreen. "This is it?"
She nodded. It was a neat column of words: WE'RE COMING, repeated sixty times.
"Well ... by itself, it doesn't exactly make one—"
"Norman. The signal came from a tenth of a light-year away. In English."
"Oh." He sipped his coffee. "We don't have anyone that far out?"
"Of course not."
"Creatures from outer space."
"Something from outer space." The phone rang and she picked up the wand. "Bell." She leaned
forward, elbow on desk, staring blankly at the column of words. "Anytime is okay. Is he the science
reporter?" She rolled her eyes. "Please. Can't we wait for a science reporter?" She exhaled slowly. "I
understand. You have the address? Right. Bye."
Norman smiled. "Science reporters aren't up at six?"
"They're sending their 'night man.' He's probably used to murders and things."
"They couldn't wait?"
"No, it's out on the nets. I called the Marsden Bureau in Washington as soon as I was sure what it
was."
"Oh, you're sure what it is?"
"No, no." She stood up and sat back down. "Just how far away, how fast. You know what the blue
shift is?"
"An article of clothing?"
She gave him an exasperated look.
"I guess it's like the red shift, but blue."
"Right. It tells how fast something is coming toward us, rather than away." She pointed at the column
of words, stabbing. "This thing came in a burst of gamma rays. Its source is coming at us with almost the
speed of light."
"Sounds dangerous."
"It's slowing down. If it weren't, I couldn't say anything about the blue shift—I mean, they could just
be broadcasting in high-energy gamma rays."
He frowned. "I don't understand."
"It's complicated." She waved the complications away. "Anyhow, I can tell how fast it's slowing
down. From that ... what it boils down to is that this thing popped into existence going the speed of light,
exactly one-tenth of a light-year away, and it's decelerating at such a rate that it will reach Earth in exactly
three months. New Year's Day."
"No coincidence."
"Of course not. They're giving us a creepy message. Those two words, combined with the blue shift
and position, say, "We know a lot about you, and we are vastly superior technologically. Ready or not,
here we come.' "
He rubbed the stubble on his throat. "Jesus." They both looked up when the elevator door chimed.
"The night man cometh."
Daniel Jordan
Dan didn't like the way the old elevator squeaked and shuddered. They were supposed to be
fail-safe, but he'd covered a story over in Jax a few years before, where one—newer than this had
dropped twenty floors. Broken necks and fractured skulls and only one survivor, her muffled screaming
terrible as the Rescue Squad rappelled down to cut open the roof. He pushed on the squealing door to
speed it up, then held the door for the cameras to roll out behind him.
He checked his watch: 6:17. The Kampus Kops wouldn't start ticketing until seven. Maybe the
press card on his windshield would protect him. The station only paid for two tickets a week, and he'd
already had them.