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

"Commence dilation at once, on my authority," he ordered.
Nunga got to his feet, fists clenched. "It's too late, they'll sight land before we are ready to strike. One
change of course will throw our tactical navigator's calculations out. The whole point of this venture is to
prevent them seeing land."
"Your experience Captain?" asked an Elder.
"In that case we'll be forced to kill them in the conventional sense, and Navigator Wirana will have the
deaths of ninety men on her conscience."
Wirana was shaken, but did not show it.
"Tomorrow night will be perfect," she continued, her voice level but her eyes blazing at Nunga.
"There's no moon until after midnight, the breeze will not be too strong-- and we'll have proved beyond
any possible doubt that they could have reached an island. Our charter is not to intervene unless the
danger of landfall is beyond question."
"It was beyond question a week ago," Nunga snarled.
***


The ridge on the submarine's back began to expand into a second tube, open at both ends, but this
one did not pump water. As it expanded the vessel sank lower to remain below the surface, and by
morning the drive tube was six hundred feet below the surface while the carrier tube's roof was barely
below the waves. The fusion powerplants were now straining to move the larger surface area through the
water. A dozen submarettes that had been flanking the Kondolae now moved forward to form an arc
upwind of the three ships. The seas were rougher than at any time during the voyage, as if anticipating the
drama to come.
Wirana was in the navigation cell at sunset when Colombo changed course to sail west. The island of
Guanahini was now dead ahead, and would be visible by moonlight an hour or two after midnight. Nunga
was strangely composed when he heard the news.
"They must die," he said simply. "The opportunity has been missed, it's too late. They changed course,
exactly as I warned."
"We will take six hours to surface," said Mudati, "and another half hour to strike. The limestone cliffs
of the little islands just south of Guanahani will be visible to their lookouts by then."
"But we can cover them in fog from the submarettes," Wirana pointed out. "If we start generating the
fog bank now it will be shrouding them a couple of hours before we need it to shroud our own approach,
yet it will cut off their view of the island."
"It's too late," muttered Nunga sullenly. "There's not enough depth to let us travel safely."
"I'll be the judge of that," said Mudati, suddenly tired of Nunga's petulance.
Ahead of schedule the submarettes began to raise a thick fog, which rapidly rolled out over the Nina,
Pinta and Santa Maria. The Admiral quickly ordered the Nina to drop back, just as had been expected.
The Kondolae was big enough to swallow whole icebergs, so big that surfacing was a major operation.
Superconductor driven pump muscles flushed seawater from the ballast bladders low on the outer hull
and the submarine rose out of the water and powered along like a floating aircraft hangar with a 700 foot
high roof. At midnight it began to bear down on the patch of windblown fog.
Nobody on the ships realised that they had been swallowed, fog, seawater and all. At a signal from
Mudati the ends of the tube began to close with a vast rumbling of artificial muscles, capturing a foggy
pond and three ships. Within the tube the wind died, and the Kondolae's own fog generators now took
over from the submarettes, filling its vast interior with clammy billows. The trapped water quickly settled
to a calm sheet.
Robot manipulators, designed to handle millions of tons of ice, gently swung out from the internal walls
and reached for the huddling ships. They were programmed to grasp the hulls firmly from below, yet give
the sensation of floating. The water remaining within the huge tube was now pumped out while mist was
blown past them from below. To the Spanish sailors it seemed as if they were plunging through a