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

the Elders! Six hundred of my specialist medical elders are being kept waiting on your whims. It's costing
a fortune."
 "If I let a bureaucrat like you frighten me, I'd be unfit for the Jupiter flight."
"Jupiter? You'll not even return to the moon, I'll see to it."
On the following day Admiral Colombo ordered his ships to steer west by north. The gigantic
submarine and its own fleet of attendant submarettes also changed direction.
"He has doubts," reported Wirana at the quarter day review meeting. "Colombo has changed course
to miss the closest islands."
"The mainland is still ten days away," agreed Mudati, "and the Gulf Stream will give him a strong
northward vector. This may be the turning point, he may give up and turn east for home."
Nunga frowned but could do nothing but agree. Colombo could make his name immortal, but only if
there was a strike. He was dependent on the Italian adventurer's whims, and he hated it.
The fleet was soon back on a west-south-west course, but the brief deviation had suggested that
Admiral Colombo was uncertain. The main directive in Mudati's charter was the avoidance of
intervention, so the mariners were to be given every chance to fail by themselves. The next day was a
disaster, however. A good breeze took the ships a record distance for the voyage. Wirana nervously
eyed the depth-sounder as the sea floor sloped up with the continental shelf. The Kondolae needed a
depth of 2000 feet to navigate safely when fully dilated and submerged.
***


Aboriginal history had its atrocities, but had generally been marked by steady, carefully thought out
progress based on a love of their land. The Kondolae had taken decades to build, grow and shape, and
was by now centuries old, typical of their approach to industry and technology. Mudati was the
hereditary captain, the ninth so far. Their cities were numerous but not large, and they merged in with the
landscape. Columbus could have sailed all the way around the Australis coast without noticing anything
more than unusual rock formations, yet there was an advanced civilisation there. It was a civilisation with
sixty thousand years of written history, and an advanced technology that had been blended into the land,
rather than gouged out of it.
***


Early in the evening Nunga called a meeting of all senior officers in the navigation cell, and arranged a
satellite hook-up with the Elders Counciliar back in Australis. One wall screen displayed a transmission
from the eye-cameras of a robotic albatross flying high over the ships. Their sails were trimmed for the
strong wind, and they were moving fast.
"This is the greatest distance that they have sailed in one day for the whole voyage," thundered Nunga,
partly for the benefit of the Counciliar Elders, whose heads were holographs behind transceiver screens.
"We have to act now, we're probably too late already. The Captain is in flagrant violation of the charter
for this voyage, and Navigator Wirana should be dismissed at once for gross negligence."
He sat down on the red sand of the floor. Wirana stood up.
"The ships cannot possibly reach land tomorrow, but will definitely sight some island the following
day," she said firmly, addressing the screens rather than Nunga.
"You admit it!" spluttered Nunga, but the Captain motioned him to be silent.
"The Nina's lookouts will be able to see the trees of one of the islands around noon on what they call
October 12th, if the present course is held." From the corner of her eye she saw Nunga's mouth begin to
open, but she was ahead of him. "Thus tonight is the perfect time to begin dilation of the ice chamber. It
will take a day to dilate and tomorrow evening will be the best time to strike."
For a moment Nunga was too shocked to respond. Victory at last, but victory too late. Captain
Mudati allowed himself a little grin as he tapped a key to call the control node cell.