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

Finally he put on a jacket, stuffed some items from the desk into his briefcase, and left in an
elevator heading for the roof. Minutes later his airmobile was at two thousand feet and climbing
to merge into an eastbound traffic corridor with the rainbow towers of Houston gleaming in the
sunlight on the skyline ahead.


Chapter Two

Ginny, Hunt's slightly plump, middle-aged meticulous secretary, was already busy when he
sauntered into the reception area of his office, high in the skyscraper of Navcomms Headquarters
in the center of Houston. She had three sons, all in their late teens, and she hurled herself into
her work with a dedication that Hunt sometimes thought might represent a gesture of atonement for


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having inflicted them on society. Women like Ginny always did a good job, he had found. Long-
legged blondes were all very nice, but when it came to getting things done properly and on time,
he'd settle for the older mommas any day.
"Good morning, Dr. Hunt," she greeted him. One thing he had never been able to persuade
her to accept fully was that Englishmen didn't expect, or really want, to be addressed formally
all the time.
"Hi, Ginny. How are you today?"
"Oh, just fine, I guess."
"Any news about the dog?"
"Good n~ws. The vet called last night and said its pelvis isn't fractured after all. A few
weeks of rest and it should be fine."
"That's good. So what's new this morning? Anything panicky?"
"Not really. Professor Speehan from MIT called a few minutes ago and would like you to
call back before lunch. I'm just finishing going through the mail now. There are a couple of
things I think you'll be interested in. The draft paper from Livermore, I guess you've already
seen."
They spent the next half-hour checking the mail and organizing the day's schedule. By that
time the offices that formed Hunt's see-lion of Navcomms were filling up, and he left to update
himself on a couple of the projects in progress.
Duncan Watt, Hunt's deputy, a theoretical physicist who had transferred from UNSA's
Materials and Structures Division a year and a half earlier, was collecting results on the Pluto
problem from a number of research groups around the country. Compari
Sons of the current solar system with records from the Shapieron of how it had looked
twenty-five million years before established beyond doubt that most of what had been Minerva had
ended up as Pluto. Earth had been formed originally without a sateffite, and Luna had orbited as
the single moon of Minerva. When Minerva broke up, its moon fell inward, toward the Sun, and by a
freak chance was captured by Earth, about which it had orbited stably ever since. The problem was
that so far no mathematical model of the dynamics involved had been able to explain how Pluto
could have acquired enough energy to be lifted against solar gravitation to the position it now
occupied. Astronomers and specialists in celestial mechanics from all over the world had tried all
manner of approaches to the problem but without success, which was not all that surprising since
the Ganymeans themselves had been unable to produce a satisfactory solution.
"The only way you can get it to work is by postulating a threebody reaction," Duncan said,