"Larry Niven - Building Harlequin's Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

So. Where to park the pusher tugs?

He smiled. They'd be passing very near Moon Forty-one.

"Wayne? Bust your LPTs loose and get them into orbit. Here are the specs. I'm working out your next
mission."

"When do we get some rest, boss?"

"I'll find you that too."

Gabriel ate slowly, savoring the celery and potatoes. John Glenn's internal garden was thriving. It had
been a water tank when they left Sol system, and their diet had palled rapidly.

He had a plan. He could start on it tomorrow. Thrust would take a few hundred days. Harlequin would
grow a little hotter; ultimately Moon One would too; and Erika, when she warmed, would love it.



Under Gabriel's guidance, Wayne's team lifted the Large Pusher Tugs from Moon Ten and set them
drifting toward a rarefied region within Harlequin's frantically busy moon system. Wouldn't want them
anywhere near the collision point.

It took him and the Astronaut program less than an hour to work up the next sequence.

The LPTs had tremendous acceleration when they weren't attached to larger masses. Their light outshone
the sun, Apollo, by a lot. By the end of the day they were in loose orbit around Moon Forty-one.

Gabriel ate at his post while Wayne guided the LPTs to the surface, one by one. The hard part came
next, as Wayne's team moored them against the bedrock core. The tugs were flattened structures, a
Tokamak-style fusion thruster ringing one side, a cage of shock absorbers and anchors at the other.
Placing anchors was tricky, because when the LPTs were set going, their thrust would start quakes.

Set them going on low thrust, let the blast backfire, they'd melt their way through volatiles down to
bedrock. Then close the insulation ports and wait while the molten rock solidified over the next century.
Gabriel's team would spend a hundred years cold, then warm again to finish the job.

But they'd finish adding volatiles and mass to Moon One before they went cold.



One OF THE LAST major movements of a complicated symphony was under way as Moon Ten
approached Moon Twenty-six, which was in motion retrograde above Moon One.
There had been other collisions. Moon One was already a dust ball surrounded by a flattened ring that
glowed in Apollo's light. It looked like Saturn in Sol system, with the ring system lightly twisted by
Harlequin's massive gravity.

The oblate spheroids drifted together like flaming taffy. Gabriel watched the two moons eat each other's
kinetic energy. Hot rock and volatiles churned in a twisting red-orange fireball and began to drift toward