"Anderson, Poul - Explorationsl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

"Could I wish not to see those?" she answered.

On our way to the auditorium, I explained the need for a dramatic presentation. Spiritual relations were no great problem. The Church could scarcely object to an errand of mercy. A few canons had expressed fear that men spending a lifetime shipbound, no chaplain among them, might fall into despair, curse God, yes, commit the sin against nature. But unless we let them starve, or slaughtered them, that risk must be taken. And in truth, the temptation was their opportunity: to smite Satan, bear witness, win sainthood.

As for temporal authorities, the Protector himself had approved our undertaking. He had more interest in science than Enoch IV before him or, for that matter, David III today. Out of disaster we could pluck a farther-ranging exploration of the galaxy than anyone had awaited for generations. We might even find that long-sought dream. New Eden, the planet so like a virgin Earth that full-scale colonization is possible. Rumors reaching me said some of the Council had warned against that. Start men moving freely outward, and what heresies, what libertinisms and rebellions, might they soon spawn? However, at present the opposition didn't appear too strong.

The public was what we must convince, at any rate a sufficient minority. "Every special interest protests resources going to space research instead of it," I remarked. "You can't imagine the pressure. I didn't myself, in spite of being in the Corps, until I got this administrative post. The journalistic media don't report major disputes. That doesn't mean they don't exist."

"But if our rulers-" Hastily: "If most of the government endorses what we do, who cares about mobs?" she asked. I was to learn that she didn't lack charity for the humble of Earth, save when they threatened her man. And then her anger blasted mainly at their ignorance. ("Can't they listen? Why, just what's been learned out there about repairing radiation damage should have each soul of the millions that crater dust has blown across, down on his knees in thanks.") I shrugged. "The Protectorate is only total in theory. In practice, it rests as much on being the compromise maker, the broker, between nations, races, classes, faiths, as it does on military force."

"Faiths?" she half scoffed. "When it keeps an established Church?"

"Och, wait, sister. You're educated, you know the Articles. The Absolute Christian Church is recognized as advisory to the government, no more. Membership in it can't be compelled. If nothing else, that would be politically impossible. Think of your own case."

"Ye-e-es. Still, you're aware what communicancy means in practice. And everything the Church calls a sin, the Protectorate has made universally illegal, under stiff penalties."

I stared. "Do you object? Besides murder and theft-Well, would you want lads and lasses free to fornicate? Your husband free to commit adultery? Or ... forgive me ... under his present circumstances, worse?"

Her nostrils flared. "He never would!"

"There, you see, the thought makes you indignant. Doesn't that prove you share the same moral code?"

"True," she sighed. "Mosaic principles. As internalized in me as in anybody, no doubt. I simply wonder if God wants us to shove them on others at gunpoint. Wasn't righteousness more meaningful before Armageddon, in those parts of the world where people were let choose for themselves? Where they could individually seek the truth, make their lives as they saw fit, why, it sounds trivial, but when women in particular could wear whatever they liked-Oh, never mind. Here we are, aren't we?"

I was relieved. We had been alone in the corridor, she hadn't spoken loudly, and hers weren't forbidden questions. But if a zealot had overheard, an embarrassing scene would have followed. Her chance of joining my expedition would have dropped to zero. I wasn't sure why I feared that, when I had insisted the idea was impossible.

Though the auditorium was uncrowded. Daphne sat next to me. As the room went dark and the showing started, she caught my hand and did not let go.

Our proppas had used minimum fake effects, where necessary to bridge gaps. They had ample real data to work with. Men aboard the associated vessels, Abdiel, Raphael, and Zephon, had taken excellent shots both before and after the catastrophe. In Uriel they kept cameras going too, and later transmitted what these recorded. Aimed almost at random, the lenses were cruelly honest. Our producers had not much more to do than choose sequences and add occasional explanatory narration.

I see, hear, all but feel and taste and smell the story around me now.

A thousand light-years hence, stars throng blackness, jewel-hued, icy sharp, marshalled in alien constellations. The galactic band and the clouds that cleave its silver are less changed to sight-except dead ahead, where a haze grows as the ships near, until it fills a quarter of heaven. White and flame-blue at its heart, the nebula roils outward to edges which are a lacework formed of molten rainbows.

Instruments take over, seeing and projecting what vision cannot. In the middle of that majestic chaos, two things which have been suns whirl crazily about each other. One, hardly bigger than Earth although more massive than Sol, has no light of its own, but flings back the fury of its huge companion's death. There are no words to tell of this. And yet the image is a ghost, a mathematical construct. Men who looked straight upon the reality would die before they knew they had been blinded.

Narrator: "Here crews have stood watch and watch for a score of years, ever since astronomers predicted that the blue giant would soon explode. Here was our chance to observe a supernova close at hand. Who could tell what we might learn? So little could we predict about this newest wonder of God's, that unmanned probes by themselves were insufficient. We could not tell what observations to program them for. Only man has the flexibility to see the unforeseeable.

"And what about its companion, a neutron star orbiting almost in contact? How was this possible? It must once have undergone the same throes, perhaps even more violent. But an outburst like that should drive the members of a pair apart, not together.

"We think probably there was a third member, also a giant, which blew up at about the same former time. Itself escaping, it took such a path that the second body was drawn close in toward the still steadily shining first. Friction with expelled gases must have helped shorten the orbit.

"Our investigators have searched for that third object. Its remnants cannot have traveled far, in cosmic terms. But they must be very feebly shining, or altogether dark, collapsed into a ball the size of a planet. We have not found them. God made the universe too big; let us put down our pride."

The tone cools: "Now that the last of the trio has erupted, the system is indeed breaking apart. Losing immense quantities of mass, the supernova must spiral away from the neutron star, and vice versa, to conserve angular momentum. But friction, again, hinders this retreat. It had scarcely begun when Uriel arrived, to relieve Zophiel on the regular three-month rotation plan.

"Certain persons question the sense of traveling a light-millennium, weeks at top quasispeed, for so short a season of duty. But we have no choice. The radiation around a recent supernova is too intense. Even under superdrive, a ship gets some of it, and a percentage of that comes through the heaviest shielding. Nor can the crew make accurate studies, entirely while moving faster than light. Much of their work must be done in normal state, at true velocity. Of course, then they extend magnetohydrodynamic fields well beyond the hull, control a plasma cloud, and enjoy quite effective protection. But no protection is perfect, unless it be divine. In view of propable cumulative dosage, the rule has been that three months is the maximum safe exposure time.

"In Uriel's case, the period was greatly lessened."