"Kevin J. Anderson -1993- Assemblers of Infinity (v1.0) (txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Kevin J)

But the mystery of the artifact kept grabbing his attention. The thing was huge -- and no one had even suspected its presence.

"Flash up the most recent orbiter picture of that site." A cube dilated in the holotank, rotated. It showed the identical scene -- without the hole and ghostly infrastructure. "When was this picture made?"

"That's from LO-3. That orbiter went down two years ago. Those pictures were taken just after the VLF went operational."

Jason stepped close and squinted at the images Waite had transmitted, but the tank's resolution got no better. "I can't make out any vehicle marks, except for Waite's rover."

"There weren't any."

Newellen pulled up his powder-blue jumpsuit and moved with ballet-like grace in the low gravity toward the holotank. The heavyset man seemed out of place in the lunar environment; but Newellen's beefy frame was held up by some of the largest bones Jason had ever seen. People didn't appreciate the nickname of "Big Daddy" until they met the man up close.

Newellen jabbed a chubby finger into the shimmering 3-D image. "Way over here you can see plenty of places with rover tracks -- here, here, and even here. These are all from when the VLF array was built years ago. You can even tell where some of the folks went off joy riding. But except for this isolated spot by the ... the thing," he outlined the volume with a chubby finger, "the regolith is undisturbed. See." He punched at the holotank and the entire view collapsed to the spot he had outlined some seconds before.

Cyndi Salito pushed closer to the image, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Jason and Newellen. "How come we didn't detect any of this before? What could have built that thing in the past two years without leaving any footprints? Has the regolith around the hole been swept back to cover tracks?"

"No way." Newellen magnified the image even more, and the ground took on a jumbled appearance. "We already ran a Mandelbrodt simulation -- we got the same distribution as what you're seeing here. The ground is essentially undisturbed."

No one spoke as he pulled the view back to encompass the entire structure. Jason kept staring at the image. "So what you're saying is that something the size of a football stadium just appeared out there, without any sign of construction, no by-products? That doesn't explain a damned thing!"

Newellen just shrugged. "Abracadabra."

"And Hopper-1 -- no idea of what happened? Or that last transmission from Trevor Waite?" Jason scowled and ran a hand through his dark curly hair. "Come on, dammit! Skyscrapers don't just start growing on the lunar surface!"

When nobody spoke for several moments, Newellen reran Lasserman's video transmission, relayed from Waite's stereochip. He stopped at the closeups of the gossamer structure rising up from the pit.

Cyndi Salito finally broke the silence. "I'm not going to be the first to say the "A" word."

Newellen rolled his eyes. "Right. Alien construction corps invades Moon. That'll rank right up with that statue of Elvis we're supposed to find on Mars."

Jason looked around to the other people in the control center and narrowed his eyes. "I'm not going to be a laughingstock. But three people are dead, and we'll damn well find out why. Put me through to Director McConnell on Earth."


*CHAPTER 2* - UNITED SPACE AGENCY: WASHINGTON, D.C.

The general was in his element. Celeste McConnell could tell by his animated gestures, the emotion on his face as he strode in front of the sprawling holographic tank. He focused Celeste's attention on images of the asteroid as it tumbled toward Earth, an unstoppable island of rock nearly a mile across.

"Icarus is on an intercept course," said Major General Simon Pritchard. "It hasn't come this close to Earth orbit since 1968. These views are from the wide-field-of-view cameras on the orbiting Leansats." The window showed a potato-shaped Icarus rotating as it approached. It grew larger as the frames changed.

A picture of Earth filled another window as the general moved his fingers over the computer's controls. A moving bull's-eye scanned the Earth as the asteroid approached. Right then, the point of impact crossed Brazil.

"If we use the SpaceGuard orbiting defense system -- " Just at the edge of the screen, Celeste could see a missile, streamlined and coasting outward, with the insignia of the United Space Agency perhaps too bright and prominent on its nuclear tip. The proposed SpaceGuard missiles were intended to be directed against space-borne threats.

Celeste smoothed her business suit. She still found it uncomfortable, even after all these years. But Washington, D.C. demanded a strict dress code. People wore ties and three-piece suits while relaxing in front of a fire. She had never gotten used to it. She preferred the comfortable zero-g jumpsuits she had worn as an astronaut, seven years ago now, while on the Grissom....

Pritchard didn't look up as he reviewed the simulation. Two stars were prominent on each of his shoulders. She wondered what he would have been like as a college professor, like most of the other PhDs she knew. Celeste suspected he had groomed himself specifically for her visit. He had set up the meeting weeks in advance.

Pritchard remained focused in total concentration. On the primary screen, Celeste watched a crater the size of a shopping mall appear over the asteroid's terminator as Icarus tumbled on its axis. The SpaceGuard missiles streaked toward the craggy rock.