"ab Hugh, Dafydd & Linaweaver, Brad - Doom 04 - Endgame 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (ab Hugh Dafydd)

sixty years before the Newbies landed!
The weirdness of the place was starting to get to me.
I kept seeing ghosts in my peripheral vision, but there
was nothing when I whipped around with the motion
detector. "Damn that Rumplestiltskin! He swore they
were still here!"
"Maybe he just meant they were here when he
died?"
I paused a long time. "Arlene, if that's all he meant,
then we're in deep, deep trouble. I don't think you
realize how deep."
"I don't get you. If we can't find them, we jump
back in the ship and return to—to Earth." She didn't
say it, but I knew she was thinking to a dead, loveless
Earth with no Albert Gallatin.
"A.S., if we don't find the Newbies, I can almost
guarantee they're going to find us. They'll find Earth.
We were almost wiped out by the Freds. We barely
hung on, and only because we evolved so much faster
than they, we were so much more flexible—because
they underestimated us! What the hell do you think
would happen to humanity if the Newbies found us
next?"
"Jesus. I didn't think—"
"And if they can go from stone plows and oxen
to—to this in just two hundred years, where are they
going to be just ten years from now? What if they
don't find us for fifty years, or a hundred years? Jesus
and Mary, Arlene; they would be gods."
She was silent; I heard only my own breath. I
almost considered asking her to switch to hot-mike,
so I could hear her breathing as well, but I couldn't
afford to lose control now, not when I had troops
depending on me. Above all else, I had to demon-
strate competence and confidence.
"Fly," she said at last, "I don't like this. I'm getting
scared." She wrapped her arms around her chest and
shivered, as if feeling a chill wind or someone walking
across her grave.
"Maybe we can pick up some trace from orbit."
"After forty years?"
"Maybe Sears and Roebuck has some idea." Yeah,
right. Sears and Roebuck never even heard of the
Newbies until just now, and if they had that hard a
time understanding us and our evolutionary rate—
Jeez, how could they even imagine the Newbies and
what they might mutate into? "Let's head back," I
decided. "We're not doing anything out here but
scaring the pants off of each other."
Arlene nodded gravely. "Kinky," she judged.