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

Gwen's eyes dwelt on that for a moment. Travel from star to star was one-way, and she had never quite
decided it was time to leave the home system. Sol-based instruments were enough to tell if there was a
life-bearing planet, and to learn much of its detail. Uncrewed probes followed for more detailed work, to
see if the prospects were good, and so far five colonizing expeditions had gone out in the probes' wake.
Only information and a few frozen samples ever came back; the ships themselves were part of the
equipment needed by the settlers.

"Well, if I'm free, I'll visit Rohmplace for the naming feast," she promised the other Draka. It was a
while since she'd been to Mars, anyway. "Am I likely to be free?"

"That depends," Tamirindus said. "I may not be able to make it. You know, fifty years ago I almost
decided to emigrate because this job was so boring?"

Gwen nodded. One of the drawbacks of immortality was that promotion became positively glacial,
even with the population decline. On the other hand, it also made it easier to wait. Though that can be a
drawback too. Patience and laziness can be interchangeable. The other woman went on:

"Well, we had another disaster with the space-based molehole platform. Moving it out to the Oort
didn't help at all. This one was bad, heavy casualties. The only consolation is that the weird shit
accompanying the accident proves we're doing something right. We haven't figured out exactly what
happened or what went where, though.

"So, they've tried microgravity; now the neuron-whackers think a stable planetary field might help."
More seriously: "We're trying everything at once, all possible avenues. I've got a dozen teams working on it
now. This is important, Gwen."

It was. For four centuries the Domination and the descendants of the refugees who'd fled to Alpha
Centauri hadn't done much more than glare at each other. By the time the Solar System recovered enough
from the Last War to do anything, Alpha Centauri was too tough a nut to crack. War over interstellar
distances was an absurdity; the energy costs too high, the defender's advantages from being near a sun too
great. Both sides had skirmished a little, traded information a little, and raced to colonize suitable systems
first—the only real clash had occurred when two expeditions arrived nearly simultaneously at one such.
Colonies were autonomous, because interstellar government was even more ridiculous than war.

In theory it was possible to destroy inhabited planets from light-years distant, although not to
conquer them. Nobody had ever thought it worthwhile, when retaliation in kind was just as easy and the
preparations simple to spot. With communications time in years and travel time in decades, even the closest
star was vastly too far to rule. Only the huge resources of entire solar systems made colonization possible
at all; there certainly wasn't any economic payoff.

This project might change all that. And the Samothracians—the descendants of the American
colonists in the Alpha Centauri system—were ahead. They'd always been better physicists, even before the
Last War; the Domination had only started looking into moleholes because espionage indicated the enemy
were.

"Downlink?" Gwen said. Best to start right away. You could stuff information into your brain via
transducer, but understanding it still took time and effort.

"Not on the Web. Infoplaque by courier; you know, Suicide Before Reading secret. It's waiting for
you, along with your stuff. We need to know if it's worthwhile putting more resources into this subproject;