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

had the accident, why did they bother to anchor themselves to the asteroid? Surely they'd just take refuge
in the operations centre."
"Only if there is one," Schutz said. "Most of our deep space science facilities are automated, and by
the look of it their technology is considerably more advanced."
"If they are so advanced, why would they build a radio telescope on this scale anyway?" Victoria
asked. "It's very impractical. Humans have been using linked baseline arrays for centuries. Five small
dishes orbiting a million kilometres apart would provide a reception which is orders of magnitude greater
than this. And why build it here? Firstly, the particles are hazardous, certainly to something that size. You
can see it's been pocked by small impacts, and that lior (???) looks broken to me. Secondly, the disc
itself blocks half of the universe from observation. No, if you're going to do major radio astronomy, you
don't do it from a star system like this one."
"Perhaps they were only here to build the dish," Wai said. "They intended it to be a remote research
station in this part of the galaxy. Once they had it up and running, they'd boost it into a high-inclination
orbit. They had their accident before the project was finished."
"That still doesn't explain why they chose this system. Any other star would be better than this one."
"I think Wai's right about them being long-range visitors," Marcus said. "If a xenoc race like that
existed close to the Confederation we would have found them by now. Or they would have contacted
us."
"The Kant," Karl said quickly.
"Possibly," Marcus conceded. The Kant were an enigmatic xenoc race, with a technology far in
advance of anything the Confederation had mastered. However, they were reelusive, and cryptic to the
point of obscurity. They also claimed to have abandoned starflight a long time ago. "If it is one of their
ships, then it's very old."
"And it's still functional," Roman said eagerly. "Hell, think of the technology inside. We'll wind up a lot
richer than the gold could ever make us." He grinned over at Antonio, whose humour had blackened
considerably.
"So what were the Kant doing building a radio telescope here?" Victoria asked.
"Who the hell cares?" Karl said. "I volunteer to go over, Captain."
Marcus almost didn't hear him. He'd accessed the Lady Mac's sensor suite again, sweeping the focus
over the tip of the dish's tower, then the sheer cliff which the wreckage was attached to. Intuition was
making a lot of junctions in his head. "I don't think it is a radio telescope," he said. "I think it's a distress
beacon."
"It's four kilometres across!" Katherine said.
"If they came from the other side of the galaxy, it would need to be. We can't even see the galactic
core from here there's so much gas and dust in the way. You'd need something this big to punch a
message through."
"That's valid," Victoria said. "You believe they were signalling their homeworld for help?"
"Yes. Assume their world is a long way off, three-four thousand light years away if not more. They
were flying a research or survey mission in this area and they have an accident. Three quarters of their
ship is lost, including the drive section. Their technology isn't good enough to build the survivors a
working stardrive out of what's left, but they can enlarge an existing crater on the disc particle. So they
do that; they build the dish and a transmitter powerful enough to give God an alarm call, point it at their
homeworld, and scream for help. The ship can sustain them until the rescue team arrives. Even our own
zero-tall technology is up to that."
"Gets my vote," Wai said, she gave Marcus a wink. "No way," said Katherine. "If they were in
trouble they'd use a supralight communicator to call for help. Look at that ship, we're centuries away
from building anything like it."
"Edenist voidhawks are pretty sophisticated," Marcus countered. "We just scale things differently.
These xenocs might have a more advanced technology, but physics is still the same the universe over.
Our understanding of quantum relativity is good enough to build faster than light starships, yet after 450