"Clarke, Arthur C - Odissey Two" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clarke Arthur C)

'Well!' said Tanya. 'I suppose we should send them a message of congratulations. But even if we did, they wouldn't acknowledge it.'

Some of his colleagues were still making fun of Vasili, who was staring at his computer output in frank disbelief.

'I don't understand it!' he exclaimed. 'They should still be behind Jupiter! Sasha - give me a velocity reading on their beacon!'

Another silent dialogue was held with the computer; then Vasili gave a long, low whistle.

'Something's wrong. They're in a capture orbit, all right - but it won't let them make a rendezvous with Discovery. The orbit they're on now will take them way beyond Io - I'll have more accurate data when we've tracked them for another five minutes.'

'Anyway, they must be in a safe orbit,' said Tanya. 'They can always make corrections later.'

'Perhaps. But that could cost them days, even if they have the fuel. Which I doubt.'

'So we may still beat them.'

'Don't be such an optimist. We're still three weeks from Jupiter. They can make a dozen orbits before we get there, and choose the most favourable one for a rendezvous.'

'Again - assuming that they have enough propellant.'

'Of course. And that's something we can only make educated guesses about.'

All this conversation took place in such rapid and excited Russian that Floyd was left far behind. When Tanya took pity on him and explained that Tsien had overshot and was heading for the outer satellites, his first reaction was: 'Then they may be in serious trouble. What will you do if they appeal for help?'

'You must be making a joke. Can you imagine them doing that? They're much too proud. Anyway, it would be impossible. We can't change our mission profile, as you know perfectly well. Even if we had the fuel...'

'You're right, of course; but it might be difficult to explain that to the ninety-nine per cent of the human race that doesn't understand orbital mechanics. We should start thinking about some of the political complications - it would look bad for all of us if we can't help. Vasili, will you give me their final orbit, as soon as you've worked it out? I'm going down to my cabin to do some homework.'

Floyd's cabin, or rather one-third of a cabin, was still partly full of stores, many of them stacked in the curtained bunks that would be occupied by Chandra and Curnow when they emerged from their long slumbers. He had managed to clear a small working space for his personal effects and had been promised the luxury of another whole two cubic metres - just as soon as someone could be spared to help with the furniture removing.

Floyd unlocked his little communications console, set the decryption keys, and called for the information on Tsien that had been transmitted to him from Washington. He wondered if his hosts had had any luck in unscrambling it; the cipher was based on the product of two hundred-digit prime numbers, and the National Security Agency had staked its reputation on the claim that the fastest computer in existence could not crack it before the Big Crunch at the end of the Universe. It was a claim that could never be proved - only disproved.

Once again he stared intently at the excellent photographs of the Chinese ship, taken when it had revealed its true colours and was just about to leave Earth orbit. There were later shots - not so clear, because by then it had been far away from the prying cameras - of the final stage as it hurtled toward Jupiter. Those were the ones that interested him most; even more useful were the cutaway drawings and estimates of performance.

Granted the most optimistic assumptions, it was difficult to see what the Chinese hoped to do. They must have burned up at least ninety per cent of their propellant in that mad dash across the Solar System. Unless it was literally a suicide mission - something that could not be ruled out - only a plan involving hibernation and later rescue made any sense. And Intelligence did not believe that Chinese hibernation technology was sufficiently far advanced to make that a viable option.

But Intelligence was frequently wrong, and even more often confused by the avalanche of raw facts it had to evaluate - the 'noise' in its information circuits. It had done a remarkable job on Tsien, considering the shortness of time, but Floyd wished that the material sent to him had been more carefully filtered. Some of it was obvious junk, of no possible connection with the mission.

Nevertheless, when you did not know what you were looking for, it was important to avoid all prejudices and preconceptions; something that at first sight seemed irrelevant, or even nonsensical, might turn out to be a vital clue.

With a sigh, Floyd started once more to skim the five hundred pages of data, keeping his mind as blankly receptive as possible while diagrams, charts, photographs - some so smudgy that they could represent almost anything - news items, lists of delegates to scientific conferences, titles of technical publications, and even commercial documents scrolled swiftly down the high-resolution screen. A very efficient industrial espionage system had obviously been extremely busy; who would have thought that so many Japanese holomemory modules or Swiss gas-flow microcontrollers or German radiation detectors could have been traced to a destination in the dried lake bed of Lop Nor - the first milepost on their way to Jupiter?

Some of the items must have been included by accident; they could not possibly relate to the mission. If the Chinese had placed a secret order for one thousand infrared sensors through a dummy corporation in Singapore, that was only the concern of the military; it seemed highly unlikely that Tsien expected to be chased by heat-seeking missiles. And this one was really funny - specialized surveying and prospecting equipment from Glacier Geophysics, Inc., of Anchorage, Alaska. What lamebrain imagined that a deep-space expedition would have any need - the smile froze on Floyd's lips; he felt the skin crawl on the back of his neck. My God - they wouldn't dare! But they had already dared greatly; and now, at last, everything made sense.

He flashed back to the photos and conjectured plans of the Chinese ship. Yes, it was just conceivable - those flutings at the rear, alongside the drive deflection electrodes, would be about the right size.

Floyd called the bridge. 'Vasili.' he said, 'have you worked out their orbit yet?'

'Yes, I have,' the navigator replied, in a curiously subdued voice. Floyd could tell at once that something had turned up. He took a long shot.