"Robert A. Metzger - Cusp" - читать интересную книгу автора (Metzger Robert)

Numbers and diagrams, glowing in dull green neon, stood out starkly in contrast to the nearly blinding
whiteness of the cone of plasma. He studied the numbers for just a moment, then looked at the little
diagram that showed the Sun’s position and velocity with respect to the Earth. Kristensen knew that he
was looking at a stellar Jet, a relativistic outpouring of protons exploding from the deep guts of the Sun.
The numbers showed how quickly the Sun was moving away.

“Got it figured out?”
Kristensen turned, looking past the cone of plasma.

“What’s the trajectory look like?”

At that moment he knew he would never reach his family. Even if the Swirl did let him leave the campsite,
he’d never make it to Los Angeles now.

“Off,” he said.

The image winked out. At the far end of the clearing stood General Thomas Sutherland, dressed in a
black jump-suit and wearing his black-rimmed Virts, the oil-on-water lenses tinted red in the reflected
light of the setting Sun. A most unimpressive figure, thought Kristensen—not too tall, a bit on the thin
side, with sparse brown-gray hair that could not quite hide his growing bald spot. Behind him Kristensen
could see the partial silhouette of a stealth copter. Here and there a branch moved, a shadow darted
behind a tree. Twigs snapped. He was being surrounded.

Sutherland took a few steps forward, looking first at Kristensen, and then up at the wedge of plasma
arcing across the western sky. “Shouldn’t have run,” he said. “We’ve figured out just what it is.”

Kristensen tilted his head and shrugged. “I know what it is, too—a rocket engine.”

“Obviously,” said Sutherland, shaking his head. “But we know what holds it together, what it’s
composed of. We have the construction figured out.”

Again, Kristensen shrugged his shoulders. “Doesn’t mean a thing,” he said. “That doesn’t change what’s
happening.”

Sutherland shook his head and took several more steps toward Kristensen. “Knowing changes
everything,” he said. “Knowing gets you that much closer to controlling.”

“Controlling that!” Kristensen turned around and pointed at the arc of fire cutting through the sky.
“There’s no controlling that.”

Sutherland smiled. “It’s a thin-walled cone of hyperrelativistic protons, held together by an electron
sheath, the structure barely 1000 kilometers thick, but nearly 100 million kilometers long. The protons in
it are moving at better than 99.5 percent of the speed of light, with relativistic effects enhancing proton
mass by a factor of 30, giving the exhaust enough kick to accelerate the Sun at nearly 1 percent of a
standard Earth gee.”

Kristensen shook his head. “Meaningless facts and figures, nothing to tell us how to stop it.” Again he
shook his head. “What is important is that its acceleration is great enough to overcome the gravitational
tug that the Sun has on the Earth. It’s been firing for nearly 39 hours now, and already moved away by