"Garrett Randall - Lauralyn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Randall Garrett)

She stood in the center of the main glade, looking up at the frosty rose-white of the mirror-moon, her
hands clasped at the small of her back. The tiny kilt she wore was decoration and nothing more; it was
the same pale yellow as her hair, which came just barely to her shoulders. The rest of her was a sweeping
flow of three-dimensional curves of beauty.

Though she did not look at me, she was aware of my presence, for, without shifting her gaze, she said: "I
didn't know anything could be so beautiful."

Nor did I, I thought. But we were not talking about the same thing.

Then she turned to look at me. "How do you get that effect?"

I looked up. "You're in luck," I said. "You caught one of our mirror-moons transiting Fuzzball. Fuzzball is
a globular cluster about sixty-seven parsecs in diameter and something like nineteen hundred parsecs
away, so it subtends about two degrees of arc. Every ninety-four days, one of the three mirror-moons
transits it at the full, so you get a rose-white reflection from our K-5 primary centered in the cluster. The
mirror-moon is half a degree across, so it gives a nice effect."

She nodded and looked back up. "The moons are artificial, of course."

"Yes; three of them, one hundred twenty degrees apart."

"How high up are they?"

"About a kilometer. Eleven hundred and forty-five meters, actually, since they're fifteen hundred meters
from the center of our little world."

"Ten meters in diameter, then. They orbit? Free?"

"They orbit. There's, no air above fifty meters; the paragravity field seals it in close."

"It's lovely. Nice design." Then she took her eyes from the sky display and turned slowly around to look
at the whole glade. "It's all lovely."

Yes, it is. But I said nothing.

I cleared my throat. "I am Father Tomas, Superior of the Brotherhood of Machine Teachers. Would you
care for refreshment?"

She made a half bow. "I am Technie Lauralyn, of Galactic Machines. You asked for an appointment."

"Yes. Just over eight years ago. You were gratifyingly prompt; I had not expected you until the tenth
year."

"I'm sorry, Father; have I come at an inopportune time?"
Had she blushed? In the rose-white light. I could not tell. Hardly likely, and yet there had been a touch of
embarrassment in her exquisite voice.

"Not at all," I said reassuringly. "Our future projections indicated a need for the expanded capacity of