"William Forstchen - Into the Sea of Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Forstchen William R)

and Caesar at the Rubicon.

Look to the choices that lay before them, a thousandyears ago in the darkness of the twenty-first
century. The world beneath them was poised for the madness of ther-monuclear night; a madness that
threatened to reach outto the Earth's thousand colonies. And with that madnesscame the callingтАФthe
calling from Old America, and Eu-rope, and the vast reaches of the Asian giants. A calling for the
children to return, to arm themselves, and to joinin the war of the parent states. A war that would engulf
mankind and create another dark age, from which we have so recently emerged.

But the colonies were no longer of Earth. They werethe new children, those who beheld a new horizon
and could look beyond the parochial squabblings below.

And one day they were gone. Pointing their colonies into the unknown, they abandoned Earth forever.
Usingplasma drives, ion thrusters, matter/antimatter engines,thermonuclear pulse propulsion, and even
solar sails, thecolonies broke the bonds and headed off into the un-knownтАФlooking for freedom and an
escape. Led by suchlegendary men as Ikawa Kurosawa, Vasiliy Renikoff, andFranklin Smith, the
colonies abandoned the parent worldto its madness. And then the War came.
 Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html




Where are they now? What great wonders have thesevisionaries of the past created, unhindered by the
Holo-caust War of the twenty-first century and the chaos that followed? Will we ever know the fate of
the coloniesmissing for a thousand years?



From a rejected manuscript by Dr. Ian Lacklin,Missing Coloniesand the Heroic Figure in History.




CHAPTER 1




"Mr. Hansin, are you with us, or are you again pondering the earthly delights awaiting you in the
women'sdormitory?" In disgust Ian Lacklin collapsed into his chairand awaited the response.

"Ah, oh yes, I fully agree with you, Dr. Lacklin. Ofcourse, you're absolutely right."

An undercurrent of snickers ran through the stuffy,overcrowded room. Ian stared them down and was
greetedwith forced looks of attentiveness.

Idiots. Graduate students, indeed. Every semester hewas lectured by the dean that this year's was the
bestcrop yet, survivors of a lengthy winnowing process. Thedean made Kutzburg sound like Nouveau
Harvard insteadof the Provincial University's worst campus, one that ca-tered to ozone-head athletes and
near-morons who had failed entry in every other system and, therefore, would become educators.