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

The situation here seemed surrealistic to her, a two-star general and the director of the United Space Agency alone in this control room. Pritchard had chased the techs and his aide away. He wanted to run the simulation himself; he had spent enough time training on the system.

"Missiles are in-coming." Pritchard nodded at the image of Icarus. She could see the rock moving, changing, tugged by the steep gravity well of Earth. The nose of one of the SpaceGuard missiles tilted, and a targeting cross appeared on the surface of the asteroid. On the third viewing window, Earth rotated, placidly unaware of the approaching threat.

"Course correction." Propulsion systems kicked in with a blast of silver-white vapor.

Pritchard's eyes were wide, enraptured by the events. Celeste tore her attention away from the screens to look at him, maintaining a professional expression on her own face. His medium-brown hair was tousled, a thin film of sweat holding it to his forehead. Wiry and sharp, Simon Pritchard did not look like a "Blood n' Guts" general.

"Ready, ready ... impact."

Brilliant orange and yellow flared up on the screen showing Icarus as the missiles detonated. "Now, we've got two scenarios. Either the yield will be small enough to deflect the asteroid's orbit -- " On another screen an orbital diagram appeared, showing the old orbit in red, intersecting Earth's position with an ominous X; then a new path in blue projected a more elongated ellipse that carried Icarus safely out of the bounds of Earth.

" -- or it will be larger than the asteroid's tensile strength and fragment the asteroid into smaller pieces. And that's the problem. A lot of tiny chunks could hurt us more than the whole asteroid. So the trick is to have the missiles diagnose the asteroid while in flight, then change their yield so that the asteroid is only deflected."

Celeste put her hands on her hips. She stood several inches shorter than the major general. "If you can convince anyone to be worried about the threat in the first place."

"The probability of an impact is actually quite high," Pritchard said. "Right now, a kiloton of rock hits the atmosphere each year -- and that's just a lot of small stuff. Icarus is on its way, after all. Watch."

The screen refreshed, showing an unaltered view of Icarus, still hurtling toward Earth. Celeste watched as the computer-generated views showed the asteroid tumbling end over end. It flared into brilliance like the Sun as it plowed into Earth's atmosphere, boiling steam from the air so that she couldn't see even the vaguest outlines of continents. It vanished into blood-red and orange as the model tried to show the impact.

"A couple of gigatons," said Pritchard. "Just like what hit the dinosaurs. We'd all be extinct, wiped out from the shock, from the earthquakes and tidal waves, or at the very least smothered over the long term by massive climatic disruption."

His gaze seemed to bore into her. Celeste felt uncomfortable, but she paid attention. Something about Pritchard's technique might be useful when she needed to convince members of Congress to support a pet project of her own.

Celeste folded her hands. She appreciated seeing this in a simulation room instead of enduring some boring lecture that had to be tailored to wide audiences and endless interruptions by aides and pagers.

With a jerk of her narrow chin, Celeste indicated the holography. All of the pictures had gone blank except for one, showing the globe smothered in gray clouds beneath which orange glows could be seen. "Is this a useful simulation, General?"

He raised his eyebrows, thought for a moment, then chose his answer. "Icarus swings close to us every nineteen years. The error bars of its 2025 orbit are almost overlapping our path. An impact will happen -- if not Icarus, then another one. We've squeaked by over and over again. I guess it just depends on how lucky six billion people feel. Are we prepared if it does happen? Most emphatically no."

Then Pritchard used a tactic she did not resent, though most other people would have been too frightened to bring it up. He said softly, "You of all people, Director McConnell, should not be comforted by the supposedly insignificant odds."

Celeste fixed him with a cold stare. She caught the slightest quaver in one eyelid. If she pushed, he would probably back down and apologize. But Celeste didn't want to do that.

The Grissom station had been wiped out by one such unexpected impact, by "space debris." Two people had died, one of them her husband Clark. Celeste herself and five others had been saved only through her quick thinking and what everyone else had called plain dumb luck. The incident had ruined her life, made her an international heroine, and, after rising up through the bureaucracy, had eventually led to her appointment as Director of the United Space Agency. Few people were willing to mention that part of her past; Pritchard, though, pulled no punches.

"I admire what you're doing, General. I really do. And in me, you have a sympathetic ear. I especially appreciate your candor. I have to put up with enough bull in twelve committee meetings a week.

"But now I must be honest with you. Regardless of the Icarus threat, whether perceived or real, your SpaceGuard defense system is not something I can sell to Congress. Nobody wants to hear about space-deployed missiles. Nobody wants to even think about them -- even if we need it."

The general set his mouth. "I didn't calculate the probabilities that we'd be hit, Ms. McConnell. It was your people that approached us for a solution."

Celeste reached across the table, palms up. "I realize that. But in the current political climate, even if the Icarus impact were an undisputed fact, it still wouldn't do any good. Nobody wants to hear about a threat from space. No matter how bad it is."

She beamed a smile at him. "Forget about Icarus, General. According to mythology, Icarus was a fool who lost his wings and crashed into the sea. Daedalus, though, was the interesting one who created dazzling new technologies. Come with me -- let me show you exactly how interesting Daedalus has become."

Celeste took Pritchard past the two stone-faced guards into the Agency's Mission Control. The two guards, a young Japanese man and woman, scrutinized Celeste's badge, though they had seen her a thousand times before. But recent terrorist threats by an EARTH FIRST! group had forced increased security. Before either guard could object about the general's presence, Celeste raised her hand. "It's all right. I'll vouch for him."

Pritchard started looking around before the reflectorized booth door closed behind him. Celeste saw his eyes widen. The local Mission Control was drastically reduced compared with the old Mission Control centers from the days of the Shuttle missions. Because of advances in neural networks, distributed processing, and sheer computing power, the United Space Agency did not need a room the size of a giant auditorium staffed by a small army of personnel to run the various missions -- a handful of people in a large meeting room sufficed.