"C. Sanford Lowe & G. David Nordley - The Small Pond" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lowe C Sanford)

thirteen other star systems. Their cell membranes use left-handed glycerols, their
DNA forms loops instead of the strings capped with telomeres that we use, plus
some other things. They’re rugged; that’s why so many of them are extremophiles.”
Liz looked at him quizzically.
“For one thing, their DNA doesn’t wear out.”
“Wow! Neat.” She knew the whole astrobiology team was in a race to study
every facet of the colliding worlds before the collision destroyed the planetoid and
utterly transformed Martin as well.
“Expected. We find them on Martin, too, and on that planetoid you found
back in the Solar System. But there is something else in some of the
volcanically-warmed lakes on Martin: multicellular Archeae with knobby-loop DNA.
See?”
Liz couldn’t tell if the stringy stuff she was looking at were loops or not, but
they appeared to have knots in them.
“God knows how long these little critters have survived protected by that
layer of ice, Liz. We’ll probably never know their earliest beginnings. What could
they have shown us?”
Liz squeezed his hand. “I think they’ve shown us that life is everywhere.”
He squeezed her hand back. “I need your help badly, Liz.”
“How?”
“I know I was against changing the planetoid’s trajectory originally. But I did
not know about the knobby DNA then. We have to stop the collision.”
“What? David? How? The BHP impactor needs the entire array output for the
next ten days. And look at the simulations. Even if we were to turn the array on the
planetoid now, without time for any preparation there’s no guarantee it would
accomplish anything.”
“There must be a way! That is your field. Give us a chance to study Martin
biology in situ!”
Liz shook her head. “I’m truly sorry, David.”
He looked at her, anguish written all over his face. “That is all I get? ‘I’m
sorry?’”
 Liz felt torn. “David, my job is to make sure the impactor gets exactly what it
needs. There are three other impactors headed for the experiment site. If any one of
them is off, a half century of work goes down the drain. I can’t think of anything we
can do at this point that wouldn’t jeopardize that. But I’ll ask the staff. Anyway, the
geometry is wrong; the planetoid’s trajectory is in the local ecliptic plane, so half the
array is blocked by the other half. The gap is on the one side, and Martin blocks the
other side. We won’t be able to get a significant push on the planetoid for another
three days in any event. Maybe you’ll have enough samples by then.”
He abruptly got up. “I need a break.”
She took his hand and held it tightly.
“Make it enough time, Liz, please,” he said. “I am going out to the remote lab
to do what I can.”
****
Three weeks later, David greeted Liz at his remote lab deep inside the only
natural satellite of Martin, and gave her a quick tour. The moon was a captured
nickel-iron asteroid about seventy kilometers by fifty by thirty. Robots had hollowed
out a 500-meter spherical cavity deep beneath the surface. They also built a rotating
drum that was 200 meters in radius to provide enough gravity to keep the
researchers’ bones solid and to settle the various fluids of life in and outside the