"S. M. Stirling - Draka 04 - Drakon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M)

"Damnation!"

Alarms flexed through the detection instruments of the USSNF President Douglas. The cruiser
was waiting on minimal-power standby, most of the crew in stasis units, everything heavily stealthed. The
passive sensors were fully active, however.

Captain Marjorie Starns, United States of Samothrace Naval Forces, looked down at the screen
again; the implants gave her the same information, with the mathematical overtones. The images of others
of the active crew appeared in front of her: her executive officer, Lyle Asmundsen, and the Strategic
Studies Institute honcho, Menendez.

She called up data; Earth spun before them, as if the ship were orbiting the planet, rather than
nearly a tenth of a light-year beyond Pluto. A grid lay across it, and a point flashed.

"Eastern coast of North America," she said.

"Certain it was a molehole?" The spook, George Menendez.

"Nothing else produces an event wave like that," she said. "Very brief; it cycled through its stability
point, grew and collapsed. They're still working on the control—but they're getting closer. That one nearly
worked. Of course, they evidently don't know what happens when you open one through a sharply-flexed
spacetime matrix, but this'll give them an idea. They're not what you'd call really sharp theoretical
physicists, but once you know something's possible . . ."

The intelligence agent started to shrug, then stopped and crossed himself. "Jesus," he whispered.
"That's another Earth they broke through to."

The captain nodded jerkily. "We've got a responsibility here," she said. "Samothrace is always
uninhabited, to a very high order of probability. But any other Earth . . ."

"What was the degree of displacement?" Asmundsen said.

She consulted the machines; the theoretical breakthroughs behind them were recent, but capacity
had grown swiftly.

"It'll take a while to be certain, but probably timelike negative, with a vertical temporal displacement
of about . . . four centuries and a lateral of six hundred—close to the minimum possible. The event-wave
track's quite clear. Something went through, and it was alive when it did."

Menendez nodded. "What can we do?"

Asmundsen smiled bleakly. "We could put the whole ship through on that track," he said. "If we
moved farther into the solar gravity well."

Starns grunted laughter. "And put up a sign, hurrah, we're here for the snakes. They could follow
us en masse in a couple of weeks. Anything we put through is going to be out of precise chronophase, and
the more energetic the mass put through is, the more noticeable. Once the snakes realize what's going on . .
."

"Should we do anything?" Menendez said. "Our mission priority is information. Samothrace is