"Robert L. Forward - Starquake" - читать интересную книгу автора (Forward Robert L)

06:00:00 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE 2050



Beep! Beep! Beep!

Pierre Niven opened his tired eyes and awkwardly turned off the alarm on his wrist chronometer. Six
hours of sleep. He rubbed his hand over his bearded chin. The beard needed a trim and there were
probably a few grey hairs peeking through the brown, but there was work to do. A quick bite in the
galley, then he would relieve Amalita at the communications console. Both she and Seiko were long
overdue for a sleep break. He heard muffled curses from the next sleep rack as Jean Kelly Thomas
struggled to put her bed up.

The long day started.



06:05:06 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE2050



Multi-scientist Seiko Kauffmann Takahashi was on the Science Deck working with the star image
telescope. The telescope looked at the neutron star with a one-meter diameter mirror in the top of the
cylindrical tower of star-oriented instruments that stuck out of the "north pole" of Dragon Slayer's
spherical body. The telescope brought a large, bright image down through the hollow center of the tower
and focused it on the frosted surface of the star image table in the middle of the top deck. Seiko looked
down at the image while the computer looked up at the same image through the array of light detectors
built under the surface of the table. When the crew first arrived a little over a day ago, the star image had
only a few features in it. There had been the large volcano in the northern

hemisphere, and the rough, mountainous regions at the East and West Poles where infalling meteoric
material collected. Now, just a day later, the star was covered with a network of super-highways
connecting great cities that grew in size even as Seiko watched. Noticing something happening in the
outskirts of the capital city, Bright's Heaven, she efficiently took her compact body swiftly through a set
of coordinated free-fall twists that put her on the other side of the table, then took a closer look.

"Abdul," Seiko said. "I would like you to observe this. There is a strange phenomenon occurring at the
old Holy Temple."
 "Just a sec while I reset the neutrino detector," electronic engineer Abdul Nkomi Farouk replied as he
pushed himself over to hover above the star image table. Seiko reached up to the ceiling and made some
adjustments to the telescope controls. The disk of light on the table expanded to show an elongated
twelve-pointed star formation in the southern hemisphere of the neutron star.

Still the largest structure on the star, the Holy Temple had been raised by the cheela nearly 24 hours ago
as they emerged from barbarism. Led by the ancient prophet Pink-Eyes (one of the few cheela who
could see the visible light from the human's laser mapping beam), the cheela had raised the great
mound-temple to serve as a place for worship of their pantheon of gods: the God-Star Bright (our nearby
Sun hovering over the South Pole axis of the neutron star), Bright's Messenger (the large asteroid, Otis,
in its highly elliptical orbit), the six Eyes of Bright (the six small asteroids in a circle hovering over the East
Pole), and the Inner Eye of Bright (the tiny human spacecraft at the center of the ring of asteroids).