"Brin, David - Uplift 06 - Heaven's Reach" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brin David)

artificial color.

A pane for viewing in two directions. A universe with-
out, and within.

Contemplating the maelstrom, Sara mused aloud.

"My criminal ancestors took their sneakship through
this same inferno on their way to Jijo . . . covering
their tracks under the breath of Great Izmunuti."

Pondering the forces at work just a handbreadth
away, she brushed her fingertips against a crystal sur-
face that kept actinic heat from crossing the narrow gap.
One part of herЧbook-weaned and tutored in mathe-
maticsЧcould grasp the physics of a star whose radius
was bigger than her homeworld's yearly orbit. A red
giant, in its turgid final stage, boiling a stew of nuclear-
cooked atoms toward black space.

Abstract knowledge was fine. But Sara's spine also
trembled with a superstitious shiver, spawned by her
upbringing as a savage sooner on a barbarian world.
The Earthship Streaker might be hapless preyЧdesper-
ately fleeing a titanic hunter many times its sizeЧbut
this dolphin-crewed vessel still struck Sara as godlike
and aw^esome, carrying more mass than all the wooden
dwellings of the Slope. In her wildest dreams, dwelling
in a treehouse next to a groaning water mill, she had

Reaveo's lleacft 13

never imagined that destiny might take her on such a
ride, swooping through the fringes of a hellish star.

Especially Izmunuti, whose very name was fearsome.
To the Six Races, huddling in secret terror on Jijo, it
stood for the downward path. A door that swung -just
one way, toward exile.

For two thousand years, emigrants had slinked past
the giant star to find shelter on Jijo. First the wheeled
g'Kek race, frantically evading genocide. Then came
traekisЧgentle stacks of waxy rings who were fleeing
their own tyrannical cousinsЧfollowed by qheuens,
hoons, urs, and humans, all settling in a narrow realm
between the Rimmer Mountains and a surf-stained
shore. Each wave of new arrivals abandoned their star-
ships, computers, and other high-tech implements,