"Sean McMullen - A Greater Vision" - читать интересную книгу автора (McMullen Sean)

 "If you're sure of that, why not advise me to begin dilation at once and get it over with?"
"Why not? To... allow him a little longer on his frontier, perhaps. I don't know."
The caravel Nina was ahead, being faster than the other two ships. Suddenly there was a puff of
smoke, followed by a dull blast.
"They've seen us-- " Wirana began, but Mudati held up his hand.
"No, that lombard was only fired as a signal. See there, a standard being unfurled at the Nina's
masthead. A sign that land has been sighted."
"Impossible. They're still days away from the nearest island."
"True, but Admiral Colombo has undoubtedly offered a reward for the first man to sight land. I'm
surprised that there have not been more false alarms already."
The Nina began to trim sail, to let the other ships catch up. Other signal flags were being hoisted now.
"I asked you and Nunga to come out here to try to bring you closer to the men on those ships,"
Wirana said as Mudati turned back to the hatchway. "I wanted Nunga to stop turning them into things. Is
there anything wrong in that?"
"No. Are you coming below now?"
"In a minute or two."
She spent the time alone on the frontier that was not hers, watching the distant ships and looking up at
Jupiter from time to time. Nobody questioned the need to strike, and as the tactical navigator it was up to
her to name the moment. An atrocity awaited her signal. At last the edge of sun's disk blazed into view on
the horizon, and Wirana descended into the submarine.
***


Seafaring was an old tradition with Mudati's people. Sixty thousand years earlier they had built
humanity's first rafts and crossed the waterways of the East Indies to discover and settle Australis. They
had never lost their technological lead, even though their society had been inward looking for a very long
time. Twenty thousand years before the Ziggurat was built at Ur, an Aboriginal philosopher had built the
first steam engine. During the last ice age another had analysed ore from what had been called sickness
country, and within a few centuries the refined uranium from that ore was used to drive their first nuclear
powered trains and ships.
All the while the rest of the world made halting progress from nomadic hunting to Neolithic farming,
and soon the first cities were raised on the land of the Middle East. As the Phoenician ships of Pharaoh
Nechos II circumnavigated Africa, the first Aboriginal rocket thundered into space from the east coast of
Australis.
In general the Aboriginals studied and monitored the rest of humanity with detached interest. Beyond
Australis the progress of technology and civilisation had been much slower, but over the last three
thousand years some new and frightening trends had been observed. Civilisations rose and fell in mere
centuries, reaching unheard of levels of sophistication during their brief flowerings. Computer models
predicted that there was a point at which the headlong leaps in progress would become self-sustaining,
and would race past the painstaking progress of the Australis people in mere centuries. All that was
needed was a new frontier.
***


The Kondolae surfaced again at dusk, two miles in the wake of Cristoforo Colombo's fleet. The sea
was smooth, with a light breeze. Wirana was in the chartcell when Nunga came in to check the status of
the ships. He always verified her figures himself.
"Ideal sailing weather," Wirana remarked, trying to be pleasant.
Nunga just grunted. "Moonrise in a few hours, and clear skies."
For some moments he examined a trail of winking lights on the electronic wall chart, then picked up a