"Lawrence Watt-Evans - War Surplus 01 - The Cyborg And The Sorcerers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

Accordingly, he took the ship in near the sun, and shortly thereafter approached the second planet at a
velocity low enough that there was no perceptible difference between his subjective time and the time on
the planet's surface.

The world swam slowly toward him, and he studied it closely.

There were no radio emanations, no large electrical fields, no microwaves, no sign of any technology or
industry. Looping around the nightside, there were no lights above the level of a Class III town, but there
were lights; there were hundreds of tiny, flickering lights, just barely detectable.
There was a good deal of background radioactivity. Slant guessed that the planet had been bombed
back to barbarism but not utterly depopulated; those faint, unsteady lights could be campfires or small
firelit towns.

He saw nothing of any interest here. He would be moving on, then, without landing. It bad happened
before; he had been through two systems where he found nothing worthy of his attention. He suggested
as much to the computer. It disagreed, and drew his attention to the planers gravitational field.

He had not given that any thought, since he knew of nothing man-made that had any significant effect on
gravity; now he shifted his perceptions, and as the ship made another elongated orbit around the planet
he studied the gravitational field.

It was slightly uneven, of course, with a few of the slowly shifting irregularities that indicated seismic
activity. However, there was also a sprinkling of tiny localized disturbances; he saw them" as a scattered
array of little sparkles, like a swarm of lightning bugs seen from half a kilometer away.

That made no sense.

These were not movements; those he could have explained, since anything that moved large masses
about altered the local gravity slightly. In these spots, though, the intensity of gravity seemed to flicker.
There was no movement in any direction, but a variation in strength as if huge amounts of matter were
disappearing and reappearing, flashing in and out of existence.

It made no sense at all.

"Computer," he asked silently, "could that be some sort of natural phenomenon?"

"No such phenomenon has been recorded or theorized."

"Any chance of instrument error?" After fourteen years, one couldn't expect every system to be in perfect
working order; there had been various minor failures previously.

"Error is highly unlikely. No discrepancies or anomalies register in measurements of any other body."

"That's really weird." He spoke aloud, in a soft murmur.

"Analysis: It must be assumed that these anomalies represent human action. This system is listed as
enemy-held, so it must be assumed that these anomalies represent enemy action. No such anomalies have
been encountered previously, and library references indicate the theoretical possibility of a device called
'antigravity' with military applications, so it must be assumed that these anomalies represent enemy