"David Brin - An Ever Reddening Glow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brin David)

>> An Ever-Reddening Glow
By David Brin

We were tooling along at four nines to c, relative to the Hercules cluster,
When our captain came on the intercom to telf us we were being tailed.

The announcement interrupted my afternoon lecture on Basic Implosive
Geometrodynamics, as I explained the principles behind the Fulton's star drive
to youths who had been children when we boarded, eight subjective years ago.

"In ancient science fiction;" I had just said, "you can read of many fanciful
ways to cheat the limit of the speed of light. Some of these seemed
theoretically possible, especially when we learned how to make microscopic
singularities by borrowing and twisting spacetime; Unfortunately, wormholes
have a nasty habit of crushing anything that enters them, down to the size of
a Planck unit, and it would take a galaxy-sized mass to 'warp' space over
interstellar distances. So we must propel ourselves along through normal space
the oldfashioned way, by Newton's law of action and reaction ... albeit in a
manner our ancestors would never have, dreamed."

lwas about to go on and describe the physics of metric-surfing, when the
captain's voice echoed through the ship.

"It appears we are being followed" he announced. "Moreover, the vessel bebind
us is sending a signal,urging us to cut engines and let them come alongside."

It was a microscopic ship that had been sent flashing to intercept us, massing
less than a microgram, pushed by a beam of intense light from a nearby star.
The. same light (thoroughly red-shifted) was what we had seen reflected in our
rear-viewing mirrors, causing us to stop our BHG motors and coast, awaiting
rendezvous.

Picture that strange meeting, amid the vast, yawning emptiness between two
spiral arms, with all visible stars crammed by the Doppler effect into a
narrow, brilliant hoop, blue along its forward rim and deep red in back. The
Fulton was like a whale next to a floating wisp of plankton as we matched
velocities. Our colony ship, filled with humans and other Earthlings, drifted
al ongside a gauzy, furled umbrella of ultra-sheer fabric. An umbrella that
spoke.

"Thank you for acceding to our request," it said, after our computers
established a linguistic link. "I represent the intergalactic Corps of
Obligate Pragmatism"

We had never heard of the institution, but the captain replied with aplomb.

"You don't say? And what can we, do for you?"

*You can accommodate us by engaging in a discussion concerning your
star-drive."