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

23 September 2264, Sidereal Reference
In her third day after emerging from hibernation, Liz Avonford lay on a towel
on the grass by a tiny pond under the warm artificial sun of the starship recreation
dome, eyes closed. Linked to the computational power of the starship via bioradio
and the local net, she was hard at work, simulating orbital motions in the Lacaille
9352 system.
At a time compression of 10,000, the planets of the system traced their orbits.
Two small ones, Sunbeam and Canning, lay close in, surrounded by the orbits of a
pair of larger worlds, Venus-like Carlisle and Mars-like Martin. Further out was a thin
belt of asteroids, then a pair of gas giants, Munro and Spencer, which might have
been twins to Uranus and Neptune. Beyond those rolled an icy Plutonian world,
Rayl, at the inner edge of a wide ring of kuiperoids.
A brilliant flash and afterglow in the inner system caught her eye. That must be
it, she thought—the impact that would occur in the Lacaille 9352 system a dozen
years from now. She replayed the last hours of the collision in real time and high
magnification. A largish asteroid approached Martin, the Mars-sized world, slowly,
gracefully taking a whole second to cover its own diameter to start with. One
thousand one ... But the asteroid sped up as it approached the planet until over the
last two or so planet radii, it was sucked into the Mars-like body in a flash. Liz stared
intently as a great enveloping black cloud boiled out of the wound and spread
around the whirling planet. She sighed at the great stroke of cosmic luck that would
let her be present at such an extraordinary catastrophe.
“Elizabeth Avonford?”
But the luck wasn’t all good; it would happen just at the end of their BHP
impactor’s acceleration. Debris splashed from the collision could easily interfere
with the vast solar arrays and beam drivers needed to send their impactor on its way.
She asked the computer to light the array’s position in vivid green, trailing and fading
over several million virtual kilometers. The debris made a virtual cloud that spread
from Martin inward and outward, and the edge of the cloud touched the ring of
power stations that would power the Black Hole Project. Should they divert the
asteroid for one revolution? Or change the time-mass-velocity profile to get the beam
out before the impact?
“Elizabeth Avonford?”
The sound of her name penetrated, and dimly aware that it was the second
time she’d been called, she groaned and opened her eyes, disoriented. Reality was
calling her back from the virtual universe and it took a moment to adjust, like waking
up from a dream.
Her eyes got into focus. The man who had spoken to her had a familiar
accent, but she couldn’t quite place him. “Yes?” she replied.
“David Levi.”
She touched the ship’s database and made the connection.
“Oh yes. You’re the young man...”
“...from Israel, who took your office.” He chuckled. “I quickly found out that
was no place for anyone with an independent soul!”
They shared a rueful laugh.
“Your first time on a starship?” Liz asked.
David nodded. “I stayed awake; watched the Sun shrink to a point of light and
redden. I didn’t realize how red it was going to get. The safety lights in the
observation bubble gave me the clue—when our gamma hit two, it seemed almost as
red as they were.”