"Daniel Keys Moran - Lord November" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moran Daniel Keys)

CityStates; the CityStates have threatened to throw asteroids at Earth--and probably will if pushed to it.
The Ganymede colony is Earth's last attempt to contain the growing might of the Belt CityStates.
Earth and its billions have not been able to prevent the establishment of free Luna, cheek and jowl with
Unification Luna; have lost Mars and the Belt to the CityStates; and seem all but helpless in dealing with
the anarchistic SpaceFarer's Collective.
In February of 2048, the Unification made a last desperate bid to contain the growing strength of its
enemies; the Ganymede colony is the result.

In late 2049, Ganymede is as far as humanity has penetrated into the deep. The colony is six hundred
persons, a beachhead preparing the facilities that will house and protect the first wave of true colonists.
The six hundred include engineers and physicists, an even dozen computerists, a dentist, several M.D.s
(and two medbots), two administrators, and one counselor.
Of course, most of the those on Ganymede come from St. Peter's CityState; and their "counselor," so
designated by ancient U.N. regulations, is in fact a priest of the Roman Catholic Church.

"They what?"
Sheila Moore lowered her voice. "Killed Janssen. That's what I heard. Blew his slip completely
away."
From topside, the beachhead is not impressive. There is a small cluster of tiny, pressurized buildings.
In an octagonal arrangement at the limits of the cluster, tall monoliths generate a heavy magnetic field that
helps protect the inhabitants beneath from Jupiter's otherwise lethal radiation storms. It is only the first of
an increasingly complex series of barriers designed to protect the colonists from that radiation.
An irony, this, and not a subtle one. Once the colony at Ganymede is no more, humans will not
attempt to live near a gas giant comparable to Jupiter for over a hundred years. The incidental radiation at
Jupiter is inconvenient to the point of frequent fatalities for humans constrained to work with tools no
better than those of the mid-twenty-first century. Within another fifty years the problems will be nearing
triviality; but by then the human race will have the tachyon star drive, and much better real estate than
Jupiter to work with.
The irony? The next time humans will make an attempt similar to this one is in the mid-twenty-second
century Gregorian, a world that orbits a barely subsolar planet named Prometheus.
The world is November.

The colony's surface is not impressive; but like the tip of an iceberg, like any Lunar city, the surface of
the beachhead only hints at the labyrinths that stretch below. The analogy does not extend beyond that
point: the Ganymean beachhead colonists are struggling against an environment that is colder and deadlier
than Luna's, colder and much deadlier than that of an iceberg.
On that Sunday "morning" in October, the colony's routine has been disrupted by the presence of the
Zaradin ship, some three hundred meters from the central surface airlock. They know it is a ship from its
behavior, because it moved through space, because their telescopes watched it approach, and because
the humans have with their own eyes watched it land atop the structures they have dug into the frozen
ground. The ship resembles no vehicle that has ever been constructed by humans, and when they watch it
too long it gives them headaches.
Tyrel November would have recognized the vehicle--though he might not have felt it necessary to be
polite to the Dalmas Missionary inside.
That Sunday, on the door to Father Michael Wellsmith's makeshift church, there is a note.
The note says:
The ten and twelve o'clock services are canceled.
--Father Michael
 "Bear."
Bear Corona looked up from his reading tablet at Father Michael's approach. He was a