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

"That's the other side of it. Wayne, we're making mistakes where it won't matter. It's a dry run. When we
get to Ymir we'll know more about our equipment and techniques."

"Won't matter? Boss, what about all these people we'll need to build the collider?"
That was something Gabriel tried not to think about. He said, "I'm not on the High Council, you know."

Wayne sighed. "Okay, boss."

"Wayne, have you talked like this with Ali?"

"No."

"Don't."



Year 60,201, John Glenn shiptime



When Gabriel warmed, there was only the AI to talk to. Humans were supposed to wake to human
warmth, to hands and smiles and talk. But sixty thousand years was no time frame to thread a live person
or set of people through, not when your population totaled only two thousand, and only a few hundred
you wanted to warm at all before you could reach your true home. So John Glenn had orbited in
silence, its huge garden mostly composted, its people frozen. The only aware beings were the AI,
Astronaut, and periodically Gabriel; or on good shift breaks, Gabriel and Wayne; or on better ones,
Gabriel and Ali.

This was a good break. He'd wake, and then he'd warm Ali, and then ... then they'd touch down on
Selene. He glanced at the chronometer. He was waking on schedule. So nothing horrible had happened
during this sleep. His senses rushed alert, smelling medicines and water, feeling the dry cool ship's air.
What Earth had sent them-new programming for nanotechnological cell repair under cold sleep-still acted
perfectly.

Gabriel wasn't sure how he felt about that. Nanotechnology was one of the things they had run away
from.

It almost never got said.

There would come a day when Ymir was perfected. On that day all this nonsense of medical nanotech
would stop. The long-lived travelers would age naturally, and die naturally. Their planet would follow its
own destiny, and none would use his power to change the weather or stop an encroaching desert. They'd
made that agreement, all of them, before they boarded the carrier ships.

They'd wondered about each other since, and they'd wondered about themselves. How could they not?
Which of them would fail to give up longevity and the power to shape a world?

"Astronaut?"

"Hello, Gabriel!"