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

Precisely.That was the key word. The receptor plates used a system of collimated microlenses, so that their surfaces, when viewed up close, resembled nothing so much as the eye of an insect. The microlenses focused and concentrated the infall of light, and greatly improved reception efficiencyЧat a price. They could absorb energy from nearly any angle, but their efficiency was vastly better if they were aimed precisely at the power source. That improvement had meant the difference between success and failure in all the simulations. But if the alignment was off by so much as two-tenths of a degree, the microlenses would lose a quarter of their efficiencyЧand that severe a power loss would mean the game would be over and lost. There simply would not be enough energy to generate the necessary temporal confinement field.

The light beam slowly tracked into the center of the Receptor Array. It did not touch any of the receptors as it moved, but instead moved down a narrow continuation of the guide path. The beam was focused too tightly to allow it to strike the receptors. The receptor panels would not have absorbed its energy but merely vaporized or exploded.

At last the beam came to rest in the precise center of the receptor. The SunSpot itself was still low in the east as seen from the Receptor Array, not far at all above the horizon. Drayax watched her displays and nodded as they confirmed that the beam-aiming system aboard the SunSpot had locked on to the center of the Array. It should be able to hold that lock for at least ten hoursЧwhich ought to be long enough for the Receptor Array to accumulate the power it neededЧif, if, if all went well.

Having made a good lock-on, Beam Control prepared to widen the beam back out from a few meters in diameter to a full kilometer across and to crank up from 5 percent back up to full power. At full power output, even when spread over that far larger area, the light beam would be ferociously intense.

Once the SunSpot had lit half a world. Even now, decrepit as it was, it packed more than enough power to turn a few square kilometers into a hell-hot nightmare.

Drayax frowned, and wished the termnightmare had not come to her so easily. That red light was still glowingЧand there were thousands of other problems that could still happen, flaws and faults that were not so kind as to warn of their existence through the diagnostic systems.

This was the moment, as the SunSpotТs power beam bloomed outward and struck the Receptor Array. Now they would know if the alignmentwas actually offЧor if the sensor and telemetry systems had been giving them all needless fits.

Drayax switched her displays to show a new set of data reports. No more need for beam-transit trajectory. Now she needed to know power input, Array temperatures, accumulator status. The beam jumped from ten meters across to a thousand in less than a heartbeat, and the SunSpotТs power level began its climb to maximum output. She watched the charts and numbers spike from nothing at all to nearly off the chart.

There was a sudden noise behind her, a high roaring noise she did not recognize at once. She looked up, startled, to realize it was the sound of people cheering, of every person in the room clapping and yelling as the accumulators successfully engaged.

Berana Drayax did not allow herself to take partЧnot at once. That one red light was still onЧeven if it was in disagreement with every other display on her board. All the other numbers were good, very good, showing the power receptors working at peak efficiency, the madly complicated system smoothly draining off the SunSpotТs remaining power, precisely as intended. She flipped her comm system. УGroundside Power, this is Project Director. WeТre showing good power accumulation across the board, but my board still shows a bad alignment. Do you have any updates for me?Ф

УProject DirectorЧweТre showing the same thing. With the power shunt in progress, I had to pull three engineers back to their operations-monitoring station. That leaves me with only two people working the problem directly. TheyТll do their best, but there are no new data yet.Ф

УBut weТre showing good power accumulation,Ф Drayax objected.

УYes, maТam. For now, we are. It all looks goodЧbut weТve got to get through the whole power shunt process. And westill donТt have hard numbers on alignment itself. If the Array starts to drift, we could have problems later.Ф

УI thought you said it was an instrumentation problem,Ф Drayax said.

УI said Сprobably,Т Ф the voice in her ear replied. УBut we have to work on theassumption that itТsnot the instruments and the alignment system is slightly off somehow. ThatТs why I need to start working contingencies, working on ways to run the alignment manually if the automatics do fail.Ф

УYouТre not making me happy, Groundside Power,Ф Drayax said.

УNo, maТam. ThatТs not my job.Ф

УIТm coming to understand that, Groundside Power. Keep me informed.Ф She switched off.

ItТs never straight and smooth,she thought.Never simple or direct. Just as she had never really considered the possibility of an instrumentation failure forcing a wave-off, it had not occurred to her that the status of the Power Shunt alignment might still be uncertain even after they had started. It should have been either/or, fail or succeed, live or die. But no. Once again, it was the fretful doubt of the middle ground.

And even if this all worksЧif the accumulator does its job, and the timeshield works, and the NovaSpot and the SunSpot both behaveЧif, if, ifЧthen what? What have we bought ourselves?

A little more time. Perhaps that was all. Berana Drayax was privy to the inner secrets. She knew that the planet Solace was well along a path of irresistible decline. Nothing could stop the crashЧbut perhaps, with a little more time, they could soften the blow, save a few more lives, or perhaps a few more million lives. Perhaps the best they could do would be to add a day, a month, a year, to some unknown number of lives.If, because of their efforts, a million people all had six months more of life, then that would be a victoryЧof sorts. And time, after all, was hope. Buy the people of Solace six months, a year, five yearsЧand there was no telling what might happen.

And no telling if it would be good newsЧor further disaster.

Berana Drayax settled in, along with everyone else in the Solacian system, to wait out the SunSpotТs orbital pass over the accumulator.

Chapter Nine

POWER STRUGGLES