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

isolation lab. Construction was still going on, and people were working out of
cubicles. Plantings and roofs would come later, he explained.
She looked grim and troubled, he thought—and steeled himself for bad news.
He showed her a seat in a bare cubicle he used as a staff conference room. Cyan
Mutori was on screen, seated with a couple of council members and three or four
people he thought might be project engineers. Cyan looked as poised as ever, with
no hint as to the position she might take. He took a deep breath.
Cyan started. “David, for those of us who are not exobiologists, perhaps you
could start this conversation with a little background.”
“Thank you, Cyan. We have found multicellular life on Martin. Worms
actually, primitive, but with a pass-through tube for a gut and the beginnings of a
primitive nervous system. We suspect there are more complicated life-forms.”
The lightspeed delay between the lab and Minot was almost a minute. It
seemed more like an hour. Finally, the people on his screen reacted with a murmur,
but it was not as loud as he’d hoped for.
He tried again. “You must understand the importance of this. We have found
the first multicelled life-form that humanity has ever found off-Earth.”
Another minute, more murmur.
Cyan beamed at him. “David, this is great news, and your team is to be
congratulated for all their hard work. Wouldn’t everyone agree?”
Louder murmuring and congratulations poured toward him. “Could we have
some additional perspective of your discovery?”
Gehenna. What else could he tell them? He spread his arms. “Look, it’s a
given that all the life we know spawned from single cells. That’s the beginning. What
we have here are multicelled organisms. So the problem to investigate is: Where did
they evolve? Near the thermal vents at the bottom of the lakes on Martin, or
somewhere else? And if so, why were they able to survive on this particular planet?”
Liz leaned forward. “These life-forms may have come from someplace else?”
He had expected his good news would set everyone’s enthusiasm on fire.
Instead he was getting polite questions.
“They have loop DNA like terrestrial extremophiles, but with these knobby
kinks in it, so we aren’t sure whether they are descended from Archeae. We could
have another, entirely different architecture of life floating around the galaxy. But the
gene trace diagrams indicate a recent origin, pointing toward a development unique
to Martin. I’m betting that life for these worms started right on this planet.”
Another wait, then someone else asked, “Have you looked into the geologic
history of this planet enough to be able to substantiate this thesis?”
He shook his head. “We do not have data enough to decide one way or the
other. We need more bore holes, more lakes, and more samples. We need an intact
planet on which to do this.”
“But we don’t have the time,” Liz said simply.
He shot her a look, then looked back to Mutori. “That’s where you all come
in. We have to divert the incoming planetoid. It would be nice if this could be done
without affecting the Black Hole Project, but this has to take priority.
“Look, I’ve studied the project plans and there is some margin built in. The
impactors lock into beacons as they approach the impact point and start exchanging
vectors. They can all decelerate a little to recover synchronicity if one is a little off.
We can make up the total momentum after diverting the planetoid and let the
impactor control system get things back in sync again. But even if that doesn’t work,
would it really matter if it takes another century to make a black hole? This is