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

chair and studying the display.
"We're on our way, anyhow."
"Does it get us any nearer instant point-to-point transfers?" That was something the
Ganymeans had not achieved, although
the possibility was implicit in their theoretical constructs. Black holes distantly
separated in normal space seemed to link up via a hyperrealm within which unfamiliar physical
principles operated, and the ordinary concepts and restrictions of the relativistic universe
simply didn't apply. As the Ganymeans had agreed, the promises implied by this were staggering,
but nobody knew how to turn them into realities yet.
"It's in there," Shelling answered. "The possibility is in there, but there's another side
to it that bothers me, and it's impossible to separate Out."
"What's that?" Hunt asked.
"Time transfers," Shelling told him. Hunt frowned. Had he been talking to anybody else, he
would have allowed his skepticism to show openly. Shelling spread his hands and gestured toward
the screen. "You can't get away from it. If the solutions admit point-to-point transfers through
normal space, they admit transfers through time too. If you could find a way of exploiting one,
you'd automatically have a way of exploiting the other as well. Those matrix integrals are
symmetric."
Hunt waited for a moment to avoid appearing derisive. "That's too much, Paul," he said.
"What happens to causality? You'd never be able to unscramble the mess."
"I know...I know the theory sounds screwy, but there it is. Either we're up a dead end and
none of it works, or we're stuck with both solutions."
They spent the next hour working through Sheffing's equations again but ended up none the
wiser. Groups at Cal Tech, Cambridge, the Ministry of Space Sciences in Moscow, and the University
of Sydney, Australia, had found the same thing. Obviously Hunt and Shelling were not about to
crack the problem there and then, and Hunt eventually left in a very curious and thoughtful mood.
Back in his own office, he called Speehan at MIT, who turned out to have some interesting
results from a simulation model of the climatic upheavals caused fifty thousand years earlier by
the process of lunar capture. Hunt then took care of a couple of other urgent items that had come
in that morning, and was just settling down to study the Livermore paper when Lyn called from
Caldwell's suite at the top of the building. Her face was unusually serious.
"Gregg wants you in on the meeting up here," she told him without preamble. "Can you get
up right away?"
Hunt sensed that she was pushed for time. "Give me two minutes." He cut the connection
without further ado, consigned Livermore to the uncharted depths of the Navcomms databank, told
Ginny to consult Duncan if anything desperate developed during the rest of the day, and left the
office at a brisk pace.


Chapter Three

From the web of communications links interconnecting UNSA's manned and unmanned space
vehicles with orbiting and surface bases all over the solar system, to the engineering and
research establishments at places such as Houston, responsibility for the whole gamut of Navcomms


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activities ultimately resided in Caldwell's office at the top of the Headquarters Building. It was