"Allen, Roger MacBride - Chronicles of Solace 3 - Shores of Tomorrow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Allen Roger Macbride)

In a disturbingly short span of time, the blazing light of SunSpot had guttered down to a weak red glow. But massive power still lurked inside the truncated sphere that was the heart of the SunSpotЧpower that was going to come out, sooner or later. Either it would be released under controlЧor else the damping fields would give all at once, and the SunSpot would flashover in a heartbeat, and for a few brief moments would outshine the local star, Lodestar. Unfortunately, those aboard the ship named for that star,Lodestar VII, would not have time to admire the phenomenon, as they, and the ship itself, would be vaporized milliseconds after the lightblast reached the ship.

Drayax checked the telemetry from SunSpot, and was relieved to find the damping fields appeared to be in good health.

With the SunSpot safely powered down, the next task was refocusing and retargeting the SunSpotТs light cone, tightening it down to as small a focus as possible and aiming it as precisely as possible at the Power Reception Array that was still showing a red panel and serious misalignment.

If the Power Reception Array wasnТt precisely aligned as it tracked the SunSpot in its orbit, either the SunSpotТs tightened light cone was going to melt large portions of the ArrayЧand the hopes of survival for everyone in the star systemЧdown to slag, or else the Array simply would not receive enough power for the job ahead. Drayax was tempted to call into Power Reception Control again, but she knew it would be pointless at best, and likely counterproductive. They were doing everything they could down there, and another call from the boss could do nothing but distract them.

Now it was out of her hands, out of human control altogether. The next part of the Sequence was in play, the automated fusion controllers and beam focusers taking over.

Seconds, minutes, passed. Drayax watched the surface of Greenhouse as the light cone was tightened down.

Generations ago, SunSpot had been bright enough to light an entire hemisphere of Greenhouse, providing the whole world with a reasonable approximation of a day-night cycle. As the SunSpotТs power had ebbed, the beam had been focused down, and focused down again, until it was merely a broad oval cross section, centered on the equator. The poles were left in darkness, the higher latitudes received far less light and heat, and even the equatorial regions received fewer hours of light than they once had. Now that broad oval of light had become nothing more than a dark red glow that spanned much of the visible face of Greenhouse. And then Drayax saw something that made her heart beat just a little faster. Something washappening to that dim and angry glow. Something that whispered that maybe, just maybe, it was all going to work.

The light cone was contracting, focusing the beam down tighter and tighter. As it shrank, the dim red oval of light on the surface grew brighter, as the SunSpotТs minimum power input was focused down onto a smaller and smaller area. The spot of light on the surface shifted its shape, rounding into a perfect and steadily shrinking circle of light, the SunSpot aiming an ever-smaller, ever-brighter spotlight down onto the planet.

The point of light began to shift color as well, as SunSpot Control shifted the output frequencies upward in preparation for the next phase. The bright red dot turned orange, then yellow, then blazing white, even as it shrank down past the point of visibility.

But Berana Drayax knew the SunSpotТs light beam was still there, even if she couldnТt see it from space. One of her displays switched itself to the feed from one of a series of groundside cameras, this one atop a three-hundred-meter tower, built a kilometer from the planned ground track of the light beam.

The beam was very definitely visible from thereЧa blazing hot circle of brightness, a hundred meters across, and still contracting as the targeting system in orbit swept the beam forward, and it made its final approach to the Power Reception Array.

The surface of Greenhouse was in theory a vacuum. In practice, the barest trace of atmosphereЧsome small fraction of the gases leaked and purged from domes over the yearsЧremained near the surface. That residue never quite dissipated altogether, with the result that there were at least detectable amounts of oxygen and nitrogen. Still, any human caught outside a dome without a pressure suit would not have gained much by trying to breathe the stuff in the few moments left of his or her life.

Though the intense human activity over the centuries had produced the trace atmosphere, it had never been enough to matter, never enough to signify, let alone generate, weather.

But then came the moment when the concentrated power of the SunSpotТs light beam struck in one spot. Power enough to light half a world, however dimly, suddenly smote the earth in one small patch of ground. Smoke and dust boiled up out of the superheated soil, the land itself exploding, rocks and soil suddenly blown up into the sky by the violent outgassing. In the blink of an eye, there was atmosphere, and a lot of it, and it was very active, at least locally.

The light beam marched across the landscape, and as it moved, the heat of its passing boiled all the volatiles out of the soil. Every bit of moisture, every stray organic chemical that had ever bonded with the sands and rocks and dirt of the surface of Greenhouse, was abruptly cooked out of the mix, boiled off into steam and smog. Jets of dust and grit were blasted up out of the surface and kicked kilometers high. The dust and debris were caught in the light beam, making it visible, a flame-bright sword slashing down out of the sky, cutting deep into the vitals of Greenhouse.

The dust cloud weakened the light beam, absorbing much of its power before it reached the ground. But even the attenuated beam was a fearsome thingЧand the clouds of dust would not trouble it for much longer. The beam was approaching the start of the guide path, a perfectly paved, arrow-straight, jet-black roadway a hundred meters wide and ten kilometers long.

It was there to provide the beam with a dust- and debris-free final approach to the Power Reception Array. The guide path thus protected the Array from being damaged by falling debris, but, just as important, it prevented the Array from losing 20 percent of its effectiveness because dust chanced to settle on the receptors, or because too much dust was suspended in a puff of temporary atmosphere over the Array.

As she watched, the view shifted to a camera alongside the far end of the guide path, looking down its length at the beam as it marched straight toward the viewer.

Drayax had ordered that the guide path be built, then ordered it doubled in width and length. She had done so more because she was worried about the near certainty of dust contamination if they took no precautions and less because she feared a one-in-a-million strike by an improbably large chunk of back-falling debris.

The simulator teams all assured her that there was little need for the guide path, and certainly no need to make it so large. But no one had ever done anything remotely like this beforeЧso how could she know how far to trust in simulations? Nor were they going to get a second chance at this if they got it wrong. Better to build better, bigger, and stronger, just to be sure. They were going to need the Array to absorb every watt of power it could, and Berana Drayax was damned if she was going to go down in history as the woman who allowed the Solacian system to die because she economized and did not defend against a few cubic meters of dust.

The beam struck the forward edge of the guide path and continued its steady march toward the Array. The dust and debris whirled away into the darkness, and all that was left was the beam of light on the guide path, marching straight down its centerline toward the Array. Then even the beam itself faded away as the finest of the dust and the last of the trace gases blew off into the surrounding near vacuum. The guide path blocked any further generation of gas and dust, and thus the beam turned as invisible as any other light ray in vacuum. Only a sun-bright disk of orange light remained, slowly crawling down the center of the path.

But being lost to sight did not mean the light beamТs power was diminishedЧquite the contrary. Drayax shifted her gaze from the remote-imaging cameras to the telemetry from the thermal sensors built into the guide path. That jet-black surface was absorbing a hellish amount of powerЧseveral percentage points above projection. She glanced back at the camera view and was startled to see a spot on the guide path showing a dull and angry glow of red. The guide path was made of material that could absorb and diffuse tremendous amounts of energy. The SunSpot would have to be generating significantly more power than projected for the guide path to show any outward sign of heating.

Good. They would need all the power they could get. But then Drayax frowned. Or was that true? They had spent precious little time worrying about what to do with toomuch power. They had worked up some contingency plans, but they had not been rehearsed more than a few times.Too late now, she told herself.Besides, itТs a better problem to have than too littlepower.

Assuming they got far enough along to worry about that problem. TheGROUND STATION ALIGNMENT light was still glowing red. Was it an instrument problemЧor was the Reception Array off axis, and off by enough to cause problemsЧor a disaster?Too late now, she told herself again. Her fists were clenched, and she could feel the sweat trickling down the small of her back. There was a cold, dark pit in her gut, down where her stomach had been a few minutes before. But some part of her knew that she was showing even less outward sign of stress than the guide path. She knew she looked as calm as if her gravest worry were running short of orange crumbbake bread for the reception. Good. That was the way she wanted it.

The main viewer switched to a camera with a good view of the Ground Reception Array itself, and the ranks of deep blue hexagonal receptor plates, each angling over toward the light beam, an endless field of weirdly identical robotic flowers, all pointing themselves precisely at the rising sun.