"Jack Williamson - Hindsight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williamson Jack)

He watched them, rising, swinging around the huge, luminous curve of the
planet. They were only six mathematical points, tracing world lines through the
continuum, making a geodesic pattern for the analyzers to unravel and the integrators
to project against the future
The gong throbbed again.
Tense with abrupt apprehension, Brek caught up a telephone.
"Give me the Astrarch.... An urgent report.... No, the admiral won't do.... Gorro,
the autosight has picked up the Earth fleet ... Yes, only six ships, just taking off from
the Sunward face. But there is one alarming thing."
Brek Veronar was hoarse, breathless. "Already, behind the planet, they have
formed a cruising line. The axis extends exactly in our direction. That means that
they know our precise position, before they have come into telescopic view. That
suggests that Tony Grimm has invented an autosight of his own!"
Strained hours dragged by. The Astrarch's fleet decelerated, to circle and
bombard the mother world, after the battle was done. The Earth ships came out at
full normal acceleration.
"They must stop," the Astrarch said. "That is our advantage. If they go by us at
any great velocity, we'll have the planet bombed into submission before they can
return. They must turn backand then we'll pick them off."
Puzzlingly, however, the Earth fleet kept up acceleration, and a slow
apprehension grew in the heart of Brek Veronar. There was but one explanation. The
Earthmen were staking the life of their planet on one brief encounter.
 As if certain of victory!
The hour of battle neared. Tight achronic beams relayed telephoned orders from
the Astrarch's chartroom, and the fleet deployed into battle formationinto the shape
of an immense shallow bowl, so that every possible gun could be trained upon the
enemy.
The hourand the instant!
Startling in the huge dim space that housed the autosight, crackling out above the
whirring of the achronintegrator, the speaker that was the great brain's voice counted
off the minutes.
"Minus four"
The autosight was set, the pickups tuned, the director relays tested, a thousand
details checked. Behind the control table, Brek Veronar tried to relax. His part was
done.
A space battle was a conflict of machines. Human beings were too puny, too
slow, even to comprehend the play of the titanic forces they had set loose. Brek tried
to remember that he was the autosight's inventor; he fought an oppression of
helpless dread.
"Minus three"
Sodium bombs filled the void ahead with vast silver plumes and streamersfor the
autosight removed the need of telescopic eyes, and enabled ships to fight from deep
smoke screens.
"Minus two"
The two fleets came together at a relative velocity of twelve hundred thousand
miles an hour. Maximum useful range of twenty-inch guns, even with the autosight,
was only twenty thousand miles in free space.
Which meant, Brek realized, that the battle could last just two minutes.
In that brief time lay the destinies of Astrarchy and Earthand Tony Grimm's and
Elora's and his own.