"Peter F. Hamilton - Escape Route" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F)

For the last quarter of a million kilometres of the approach, Marcus put the ship on combat status.
The nodes were fully charged, ready to jump. Thermo-dump panels were retracted. Sensors maintained
a vigilant watch for approaching combat wasps.
"They must know we're here," Wai said when they were 8,000 kilometres away. "Why don't they
acknowledge us?"
"Ask them," Marcus said sourly. Lady Mac was decelerating at a nominal one gee, which he was
varying at random. It made their exact approach vector impossible to predict, which meant their course
couldn't be seeded with proximity mines. The manoeuvre took a lot of concentration.
"Still no electromagnetic emission in any spectrum," Karl reported. "They're certainly not scanning us
with active sensors."
"Sensors are picking up their thermal signature," Schutz said. "The structure is being maintained at 36
degrees Celsius."
"That's on the warm side," Katherine observed. "Perhaps their environmental system is
malfunctioning."
"Shouldn't affect the transponder," Karl said.
"Captain, I think you'd better access the radar return," Schutz said.
Marcus boosted the fusion drives up to one and a half gees, and ordered the flight computer to
datavise him the radar feed. The image which rose into his mind was of a fine scarlet mesh suspended in
the darkness, its gentle oceanswell pattern outlining the surface of the station and the disc particle it was
attached to. Except Marcus had never seen any station like this before. It was a gently curved
wedge-shape structure, 400 metres long, 300 wide, and 150 metres at its blunt end. The accompanying
disc particle was a flattened ellipsoid of stony iron rock, measuring eight kilometres along its axis. The tip
had been sheared off, leaving a flat cliff half a kilometer in diameter, to which the structure was clinging.
That was the smallest of the particle's modifications. A crater four kilometres across, with perfectly
smooth walls, had been cut into one side of the rock. An elaborate unicorn-horn tower rose 900 metres
from its centre, ending in a clump of jagged spikes.
"Oh Jesus," Marcus whispered. Elation mingled with fear, producing a deviant adrenaline high. He
smiled thinly. "How about that?"
"This was one option I didn't consider," Victoria said weakly.
Antonio looked round the bridge, a frown cheapening his handsome face. The crew seemed dazed,
while Victoria was grinning with delight. "Is it some kind of radio astronomy station?" he asked.
"Yes," Marcus said. "But not one of ours. We don't build like that. It's xenoc."
Lady Mac locked attitude a kilometer above the xenoc structure. It was a position which made the
disc appear uncomfortably malevolent. The smallest particle beyond the fuselage must have massed over
a million tonnes; and all of them were moving, a Slow, random three-dimensional cruise of lethal inertia.
Amber sunlight stained those near the disc's surface a baleful ginger, while deeper in there were only
phantom silhouettes drifting over total blackness, flowing in and out of visibility. No stars were evident
through the dark, tightly packed nebula.
"That's not a station," Roman declared. "It's a shipwreck."
Now that Lady Mac's visual-spectrum sensors were providing them with excellent images of the
xenoc structure, Marcus had to agree. The upper and lower surfaces of the wedge were some kind of
silver-white material, a fuselage shell which was fraying away at the edges. Both of the side surfaces were
dull brown, obviously interior bulkhead walls, with the black geometrical outline of decking printed
across them. The whole structure was a cross-section torn out of a much larger craft. Marcus tried to fill
in the missing bulk in his mind; it must have been vast, a streamlined delta fuselage like a hypersonic
aircraft. Which didn't make sense for a starship. Rather, he corrected himself, for a starship built with
current human technology. He wondered what it would be like to fly through interstellar space the way a
plane flew through an atmosphere, swooping round stars at a hundred times the speed of light. Quite
something.
"This doesn't make a lot of sense," Katherine said. "If they were visiting the telescope dish when they