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

tossing up his hands in exasperation. "Maybe the war had nothing to do with it. Maybe what broke
Minerva up was something else passing through the solar system."
Thirty minutes later and a few doors farther along the corridor, Hunt found Marie, Jeff,
and two of the students on loan from Princeton, excitedly discussing the set of partial-
differential tensor functions being displayed on a large mural graphics screen.
"It's the latest from Mike Barrow's team at Livermore," Marie told him.
"I've already seen it," Hunt said. "Haven't had a chance to go through it yet, though.
Something about cold fusion, isn't it?"
"What it seems to be saying is that the Ganymeans didn't have to generate high thermal
energies to overcome proton-proton repulsion," Jeff chipped in.
"How'd they do it then?" Hunt asked.
"Sneakily. They started off with the particles being neutrons so there wasn't any
repulsion. Then, when the particles were inside the range of the strong force, they increased the
energy gradient at the particle surfaces sufficiently to initiate pair production. The neutrons
absorbed the positrons to become protons, and the electrons were drawn off. So there you've got it-
two protons strongly coupled. Pow! Fusion."
Hunt was impressed, although he had seen too much of Gany
mean physics by that time to be astounded. "And they could control events like that down
at that level?" he asked.
"That's what Mike's people reckon."
Shortly afterward, an argument developed over one of the details, and Hunt left the group
as they were in the process of placing a call to Livermore for clarification.
It seemed as if the information left by the Ganymeans was all starting to bear fruit at
once, causing something new to break out every day. Caidwell's idea of using Hunt's section as an
international clearinghouse for the research into Ganymean sciences was starting to produce
results. When the first clues concerning Minerva and the Ganymeans were coming to light, Caidwell
had set up Hunt's original pilot group to do exactly this kind of thing. The organization had
proved well suited to the task, and now it formed a ready-made group for tackling the latest


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studies.
Hunt's last call was on Paul Shelling, whose people occupied a group of offices and a
computer room on the floor below. One of the most challenging aspects of Ganymean technology was
their "gravities," which enabled them to deform spacetime artificially without requiring large
concentrations of mass. The Shapieron's drive system had utilized this capability by creating a
"hole" ahead of the ship into which it "fell" continuously to propel itself through space; the
"gravity" inside the vessel was also manufactured, not simulated. Shelling, a gravitational
physicist on a sabbatical from Rockwell International, headed up a mathematical group which had
been delving into Ganymean field equations and energy-metric transforms for six months. Hunt found
him staring at a display of isochrons and distorted spacetime geodesics, and looking very
thoughtful.
"It's all there," Sheffing said, keeping his eyes fixed on the softly glowing colored
curves and speaking in a faraway voice. "Artificial black holes...just switch 'em on and off to
order."
The information did not come as a big surprise to Hunt. The Ganymeans had confirmed that
the Shapieron's drive had in fact achieved this, and Hunt and Shelling had talked about its
theoretical basis on many occasions. "You've figured it out?" Hunt asked, slipping into a vacant