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

Neshobe Kalzant tried to think about how her day had started, but she could not remember that far back. She stared down at her coffee cup, trying to figure how long she had been awake, how many cups of coffee she had drunk. But all things blurred together. She had been on theLodestar VII forever; she would always be on it. She had spent all her lifetime waiting out the SunSpotТs pass over the Power Reception Array; she would still be waiting until the end of her days.

She could not clearly remember the all clear call after the SunSpot had been safely reaimed and refocused. She had a vague notion of her security team unstrapping her, but that seemed so long ago that she could not truly believe it was all part of the same day. She must have returned here at some point, drawn, like everyone else on this platform, back to the central point, to the control center, where their joint fate would first be known. If she really concentrated, she could remember the short walk from her quarters.

She could even remember at least some of the polite, meaningless conversations she had had with various politicians. None of the pols had anything larger in mind than the prestige of being seen with the Planetary Executive on this all-important day. Assuming civilization held together long enough to allow it, there would be a whole series of virtually identical new still images: Neshobe smiling and shaking hands with Mayor Blank on BlankТs wall, with Habitat Executive Dash on DashТs bulkhead, with Representative Dot in DotТs newsletter, and on and on and on. She did not know whether to marvel respectfully at the way Blank, Dash, Dot, and all the others could focus on the trivia of political gamesmanship at such a moment, or else whether to stand aghast that such powerful men and women had so little imagination and understanding, appalled that they were actually capable of functioning at such a time. Their worlds, their lives, were balanced on a knife edge, and still the buffet table did a steady business.

But even as the day lasted forever, time was running out. Each minute, each second, seemed to pause forever, and then lurch clumsily into the past, shoved aside from behind by the next lumpen fraction of time that would tarry too long, then leave too soon.

The magnificent starscape gleamed down at her from the command centerТs main display screen. Inset in the four corners of the screen were numeric displays of one sort or another, showing various parameters and statistics and projections that were no doubt of great importance to the technicians on the main level below. The two numbers Neshobe understood were in the upper-right corner.



CURRENT POWER RECEPTION PROCESS DURATION: 08:51:13 CURRENT POWER STORAGE LEVEL AS PERCENTAGE OF REQUIREMENT: 82.97%



The two numbers kept moving, and no doubt they mattered greatly, but it was the center of the display that demanded her attention.

The satellite Greenhouse floated there, its cratered surface shrouded in gloom, lit in half phase by its distant sun. Dimmer light, reflected off the surface of giant Comfort, lit part of the dark side, forming a band of lighter shadow.

The huge habitats that made the world important were barely visible, tiny gleaming dots of light in the greater darkness, gathered in clusters here and there. One spot of perfect blue-white gleamed from the darkened surface of the worldЧthe Power Reception ArrayЧsoaking up all the light energy that the SunSpot could deliver, a few square kilometers of power receptors greedily absorbing all the power meant to light a world.

There was something terrifying in the fact that the Reception Array was large enough, bright enough, to be seen so easily from space. That much power, in so small a space, was deeply unnerving to contemplate. Someone had told her that the SunSpot was beaming as much power as would be produced by a constant series of small nuclear explosions, one every five seconds.

And this is just the banked embers of SunSpotТs former power,she told herself.This is just a tiny fraction of the energy weТll unleash once we light NovaSpot.

She wondered, only for a moment, if she and her people ought to be trusted with such power. But the mere need to ask the question brought its answer:Of course not. It took but a glance at the shambles they had made of Solace to answer that one. No human beings ought to have such power; none could be trusted with it. But УoughtФ didnТt matter anymore. This was survival, and the most immoral act Neshobe could possibly choose would be to take no risks, take no action, have her people do only what they oughtЧand then watch their worlds die.

Just over an hour to go. Power storage crept up over 83 percent as she watched. She glanced down at the lower-right-hand corner and saw that the history graph confirmed what she had thought: The rate of increase had slowed to almost nothing over the last hour or so. But the power was still going in. That much was plain.

УThis is the voice of Ignition Control,Ф said the announcer, speaking from his station in the farthest corner. УWe are coming up on the nine-hour mark of power accumulation. Though the nominal period for power reception is ten hours, we anticipate approximately one and a half additional hours during which the SunSpot will actually be in effective line of sight of the Power Reception Array. SunSpot will then move past the point in the sky, as seen from the PRA, beyond which the individual receptors in the Array cannot be pointed. We are anticipating accumulation of the last 17 percent of required stored power during that period. This is the voice of Ignition Control.Ф

Neshobe Kalzant was starting to develop a strained sort of respect for Ignition ControlТs calm and understated voice. All of what he said was true, and yet it was wonderfully misleading. He made it sound as if all was as it had been expected, that everything was going exactly according to plan.

Neshobe Kalzant knew otherwise. Receptor efficiency had started high, but had begun drifting lower almost at once. The power storage level should have been well over 90 percent by now, perhaps higher. The mission plan called for reaching 100 percent at about the ten-hour mark, with the last half hour before they lost line of sight spent in banking reserve power.

But the voice of Ignition Control misled in another direction as well. No one really knew how much power they would really need, and no one had really known ahead of time how much they could get. The target of 100 percent by the ten-hour mark was almost completely arbitrary, merely setting down two round numbers that were reasonably close to the rough estimates.

The question marks were on the Groundside part of the operation. The SunSpotТs orbital period was, of course, known down to the microsecond, and likewise its engineers knew everything about its power curves and output signatures. However, there were tremendous uncertainties as to the behavior of the Reception Array and the power storage system. The design had been tweaked and tuned and refined over and over again, maximizing its efficiency at all cost. That had been absolutely necessary. Various engineering restraints meant it would be impractical, or even impossible, to make the Array larger than it was. Even so, the initial simulations had all come up short of the required power levels. So the tweaking and upgrading and fine-tuning had started. The designers had promised the power levels would improveЧbut the numbers at the moment were almost exactly where the pretweaking simulations said they would be.

But weТre only pretending we know what the required power levels are,Neshobe reminded herself. No one had ever created a temporal confinement this large before, or even anything remotely as big. There had not been time to run the integrated simulations that would have given them a precise figureЧor at least a better guessЧof how much power was required. If the actual power level required was lower than thought, all might still be well. If it was higherЧthen they might as well shut down the whole operation and head home now, so the crew could wait out the coming end times with their families.

Neshobe gave up all pretense of doing anything but staring at the image of Greenhouse. Greenhouse, now a world of murk and shadows, with but one tiny, bright gleam of hope aglow upon its surface, and that gleam fading slowly but steadily all day long.

She stared until her neck ached, stared until she realized the pain in the palms of her hands was made by her own balled fists, by her nails digging into her own flesh, stared until she could make nothing meaningful at all of the images she saw, until the globe of Greenhouse was a dark and monstrous eye, a blaze of light for its pupil, staring back at her, pulling her into its soulless gaze. The voice of Ignition Control said something more, his tones booming and echoing in the background, but the words were nothing but pleasant, meaningless noise to her.

At last, by sheer effort of will, she tore her eyes away, turned her back on the huge images, and looked down at the command center, at the people laboring to save the world she could no longer bear to look upon.

As Planetary Executive Neshobe Kalzant looked down, Project Director Berana Drayax looked up. Drayax looked worn down. Her hair, perfectly coiffed at the start of the day, was now in disarray, strands drooping to frame her face. Her clothes were rumpled, her skin pale and drawn, nearly ashen. Their eyes met, but Neshobe could read nothing there. Drayax could not even manage an insincere smile.