"Robert F. Young - The Summer of the Fallen Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

tree, Yggdrasil.
The Brunhilde 2 spacecraft atop the third Valkyrie stage was the second offspring of Larkin's
quarter-of-a-century marriage to his Dream. Its slightly less sophisticated older sister, Brunhilde 1, had
carried three astronauts around Neptune and demonstrated the viability of the Larkin Space Drive, at
least to the extent that its full potential of 0.99 C could be employed on an interplanetary flight. The
Brunhilde 2 would also carry three astronauts — this time, around Barnard's Star, 6.2 light-years from
the sun.
Barnard's Star had been known to have a planet as long ago as 1963, its presence having been
deduced from its gravitational effect on its sun. Many times the size of Jupiter, it was ex officio unfit for
human habitation, but the presence of one planet (Larkin had argued in his successful jihad against
NASA's choice of Alpha Centauri) virtually guaranteed the presence of others, and one of them just
might be the long-range answer to Earth's population dilemma.
Confident of his Drive, he had even impugned the necessity of a test flight, maintaining that Barnard's
Star should be the Brunhilde l's objective, not Neptune. But NASA would have no part of such
foolhardiness. Even after the spacecraft's flawless performance, even after Larkin's aerospace company
had built an even more sophisticated vehicle, NASA had still hung back, insisting on another test run
around Neptune, plus probes and flybys of the extrapolated Barnard's Star system. More years would
have gone by, years that Larkin couldn't afford to squander. He was in his 40s. He would be 60 by the
time the mission was completed, even if it were undertaken at once. Desperate, he threatened to resign
as prime contractor and to dissolve his company, and be damned to the lawsuits, if NASA continued to
procrastinate. NASA gave in. They knew as well as he did that without his genius to guide it the New
Space Program would go Pffffft! like the Vanguard rocket.
The spaceship loomed almost directly above him now, a giant goddess out of the remote past. The
downward flare of the lowermost stage became in his mind the flare of a Brobdingnagian skirt.
Soon, when the hold he'd put into effect ended, the launch site would again swarm with technicians.
Now, except for himself and the guards, there was no one about. NASA might be his Master, but as No.
1 Houseboy he'd carried sufficient weight to shut the machinery down. Long enough to say good-by.
Tomorrow, his beloved starship would be starborne. Starborne, and climbing swiftly toward the
speed of light.
The idea for the Drive had come to him when he was a young man. It had come to him during the
night, or so it seemed in retrospect. He had seen in his mind a sophisticated device analogous to a
multifaceted reflector. A reflector that would slow approaching light-waves by throwing them back upon
themselves, the amount of slowdown to be dependent upon the number of facets in operation. The
retardation would be analogous to a wrench thrown into the machinery of the physical universe, and the
universe would have to compensate for the resultant discrepancy by forcing the Drive and the spacecraft
incorporating it toward the light source at a Velocity commensurate to the amount of retardation.
Theoretically, if approaching light-waves could be brought to a standstill, such a drive could attain
C—the velocity of light. In practice, however, this did not prove to be true. The unknown cosmic force
that co-operated in the first instance refused to co-operate in the second, and while Larkin's Space
Drive, when perfected, had been able to attain 0.99 C, it was unable to equal C. It had yet another
limitation. By its very nature, it was operable only in deep space, thus making a spacecraft employing it
partially dependent on the very action-and-reaction systems it had otherwise transcended.
Ideas are for free, but there is a price tag on realizing them. Larkin had paid for his Drive. Dearly.
With years of exhausting endeavor. With mental anguish. With celibacy. With the right to live by proxy
through a son. With sleepless nights. Sometimes with despair. But he had got what he paid for. A
practical pathway to the stars. Allowing for acceleration and deceleration, the forthcoming mission would
consume a decade and a half, but owing to the Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction, less than three would
pass for the astronauts on board. If Barnard's Star proved to have an Earth-type planet, uninhabited, or
inhabited by beings inferior to man, colonization could be begun.
 The night had grown cold. Dampness was creeping in from the sea. He turned up the collar of his