"James P. Hogan - Giants 3 - Giant's Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hogan James P)

"It's coming up," Hunt called after her.
"The usual," her voice threw back from the doorway.
"You guessed?"
"The English are creatures of habit."
"Why make life complicated?"
The screen presented a list of grocery items that were getting low, and Hunt okayed the
computer to transmit an order to Albertson's for delivery later that day. The sound of the shower
being turned on greeted him as he emerged from the kitchen and walked through into the living
room, wondering how a world that accepted as normal the nightly spectacle of people discussing
their constipation, hemorrhoids, dandruff, and indigestion in front of an audience of a million
strangers could possibly find something obscene in the sight of pretty girls taking their clothes
off. "There's now't so strange as folk," his grandmother from Yorkshire would have said, he
thought to himself.
It wouldn't have needed a Sherlock Holmes to read the story of the night before from the
scene that confronted him in the living room. The half-fflled coffee cup, empty cigarette pack,
and the remains of a pepperoni pizza surrounded by scientific papers and notes strewn untidily in
front of the desk terminal told of an evening that had begun with the best and purest of
intentions to explore another approach to the Pluto problem. Lyn's shoulder bag on the table by
the door, her coat draped across one end of the couch, the empty Chablis bottle, and the white
cardboard box containing traces of a beef-curry dinner-to-go all added up to an interruption in
the form of an unexpected but not exactly unwelcome arrival. The crumpled cushions and the two
pairs of shoes lying where they had fallen between the couch and the coffee table said the rest.
Oh well, Hunt told himself, it wouldn't make much difference to the rest of the world if the
solution to how Pluto had wound up where it was had to wait an extra twenty-four hours.
He walked over to the desk and interrogated the terminal for any mail that might have come
in overnight. There was a draft of a paper being put together by Mike Barrow's team at Lawrence
Livermore Labs, suggesting that an aspect of Ganymean physics that they had been studying implied
the possibility of achieving fusion at low temperatures. Hunt scanned it briefly and rerouted it
to his office for closer reading there. A couple of bifis and statements of account...file away
and present again at the end of the month. Videorecording from Uncle William in Nigeria; Hunt


file:///F|/rah/James%20P.%20Hogan/Hogan,%20James%20P%20-%20Giant's%20Star.txt (2 of 137) [2/4/03 10:56:12 PM]
 file:///F|/rah/James%20P.%20Hogan/Hogan,%20James%20P%20-%20Giant's%20Star.txt

entered a command for a replay and stood back to watch. Beyond
the closed door the shower noises stopped, then Lyn sauntered back into the bedroom.
William and the family had enjoyed having Vie over on vacation recently and had especially
liked hearing his personal account of his experiences at Jupiter and later back on Earth with the
Ganymeans...Cousin Jenny had gotten an admin job at the nuclear steelmaking complex that was just
going into operation outside Lagos...News from the family in London was that all were well, except
for Vie's older brother, George, who had been charged with threatening behavior after an argument
about politics at his local pub...The postgraduate students at Lagos University had been
enthralled by Hunt's lecture about the Shapieron and were sending on a list of questions that they
hoped he'd find time to reply to.
Just as the recording was finishing, Lyn came out of the bedroom wearing her chocolate
blouse and ivory crepe skirt from the night before, then disappeared again into the kitchen.
"Who's that?" she called, to the accompaniment of cupboard doors being opened and closed and
plates being set down on a working surface.
"Uncle Billy."