"Alan Dean Foster - Flinx 4 - End of the Matter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

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The End of the Matter -- Alan Dean Foster

(Version 1.0 -- 12/07/2000)


For Tim Kirk,
With thranx тАж


Prologue

Take a God-sized bottle of hundred-proof night, spill it across a couple of dozen light-years, and
you have the phenomenon humanxkind called the Velvet Dam. A dark nebula so dense that no near star
was powerful enough to excite it to glow, the Dam drew an impenetrable curtain across a vast
portion of the stage of space. No sun shone through it to the inhabited region known as the Humanx
Commonwealth. No broadcasts, transmissions, or birthday greetings could be sent from beyond the
vast ebony wall.
It lay far above the burgeoning ellipsoid of the Commonwealth, and ran roughly parallel to the
galactic equator. Yet since that which is unseeable is ever the most attractive, humanx
exploratory efforts had already begun to probe persistently at its flanks.
One mission was the same as any other to the drone. Whether it sought out new information behind
the as- yet-unexplored Dam or above the surface of Earth's own moon made no difference to its
tireless mind. Not that the drone was ignorant, however. The enormous distances traveled by such
long-range sensor vehicles rendered constant monitoring impossible. So in addition to the plethora
of precision recorders and scientific instrumentation provided for sampling the far reaches of
space, the independent robotic drones were equipped with sophisticated electronic brains. Of
necessity, they also possessed a certain amount of decision making ability.
Its own incredibly complex collage of minute circuitry was what changed the drone's preprogrammed
course. In its limited mechanical fashion, the drone had determined that the new subject was of
sufficient importance to dictate a shift in plans. So it broke from its assigned path, fired its
tiny KK drive, and relayed its decision to the drone mother monitor station.
Though small, the tiny drive could push the unmanned vehicle at a speed no humanx-occupied craft
could attain. As it raced toward the source of the extraordinary disturbance, it continued to
relay its readings back to the monitoring station. Before very long (drone time) it had approached
a spot where visual recording was possible. Without judging, without evaluating, the drone worked
hard to send a flood of information back to the station banging just at the corner of the Velvet
Dam.
What the drone recorded and relayed was consumption on a cosmic scale. It hunted through its
memory for records of similar phenomena, but came up empty. This was shattering, since in its
ultraminiaturized files the drone retained some mention of every variety of astronomical
occurrence ever witnessed and noted by humanxkind.
The drone-mind worked furiously. Preliminary surveillance was complete-should it depart now and
return to its original task or continue to study this momentous event? This was a critical
decision. The drone was aware of its own value, yet it seemed inarguable that any additional bit
of information it could obtain here would be more valuable to its makers than everything else it
might accomplish elsewhere. So the crucial circuits were engaged, locked with religious fervor.
The drone moved nearer, closer, ever studying and transmitting new knowledge until, without so
much as an electronic whimper, it too was devoured.