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

away from the spaceport. Sonora was one of 15 asteroids captured by their Lagrange point, a zone
where their respective gravity fields were in equilibrium. Behind the starship, Lazaro was a grubby grey
crescent splattered with white craters. Given that Zacateca was small for a gas giant, barely 40,000
kilometres in diameter, Lazaro was an unusual companion. A moon 9,000 kilometres in diameter, with an
outer crust of ice 50 kilometres deep. It was that ice which had originally attracted the interest of the
banks and multistellar finance consortia. Stony iron asteroids were an ideal source of metal and minerals
for industrial stations, but they were also notoriously short of the light elements essential to sustain life. To
have abundant supplies of both so close together was a strong investment incentive.
Lady Mac's radar showed Marcus a serpentine line of one-tonne ice cubes flung out from Lazaro's
equatorial mass-driver, gliding inertly up to the Lagrange point for collection. The same inexhaustible
source which allowed Sonora to have its unique sea.
All the asteroids in the cluster had benefited from the plentiful ice, their economic growth racing
ahead of equivalent settlements. Such success always bred resentment among the indigenous population,
who inevitably became eager for freedom from the founding companies. In this case, having so many
settlements so close together gave their population a strong sense of identity and shared anger. The
cluster's demands for autonomy had become increasingly strident over the last few years. A situation
agitated by numerous violent incidents and acts of sabotage against the company administration staff.
Ahead of the Lady Mac, Marcus could see the tidal hurricane Lazaro stirred up amid the wan amber
and emerald stormbands of Zacateca's upper atmosphere. An ocean-sized hypervelocity maelstrom
which followed the moon's orbit faithfully around the equator. Lightning crackled round its fringes,
500kilometer-long forks stabbing out into the surrounding cyclones of ammonia cirrus and methane sleet.
The starship was accelerating at two gees now, her triple fusion drives sending out a vast streamer of
are-bright plasma as she curved around the bulk of the huge planet. Her course vector was slowly
bending to align on the star which Antonio intended to prospect, 38 light years distant. There was very
little information contained in the almanac fileother than confirming it was a K class star with a disc.
Marcus cut the fusion drives when the Lady Mac was 7,000 kilometres past perigee and climbing
steadily. The thermo-dump panels and sensor clusters sank down into their jump recesses below the
fuselage, returning the ship to a perfect sphere. Fusion generators began charging the energy patterning
nodes. Orange circles flashing through Marcus's mind were illustrating the slingshot parabola she'd flown,
straightening up the farther the gas giant was left behind. A faint star slid into the last circle.
 An event horizon swallowed the starship. Five milliseconds later it had shrunk to nothing.
"Okay, try this one," Katherine said. "Why should the gold or anything else congeal into lumps as big
as the ones they say it will? Just because you've got a planetoid with a hot core doesn't mean it's
producing the metallic equivalen of fractional distillation. You're not going to get an onion-layer effect with
strata of different metals. It doesn't happen on planets, it won't happen here. If there is gold, and platinum
and all the rest of this fantasy junk, it's going to be hidden away in ores just like it always is."
"So Antonio exaggerated when he said it would be pure," Karl retorted. "We just hunt down the
highest grade ore particles in the disc. Even if it's only 50 percent, who cares? We're never going to be
able to spend it all anyway."
Marcus let the discussion grumble on. It had been virtually the only topic for the crew since they'd
departed Sonora five days ago. Katherine was playing the part of chief sceptic, with occasional support
from Schutz and Wai, while the others tried to shoot her down. The trouble was, he acknowledged, that
none of them knew enough to comment with real authority. At least they weren't talking about the sudden
departure from Ayachcho any more.
"If the planetoids did produce ore, then it would fragment badly during the collision which formed the
disc," Katherine said. "There won't even be any mountain-sized chunks left, only pebbles."
"Have you taken a look outside recently?" Roman asked. "The disc doesn't exactly have a shortage
of large particles."
Marcus smiled to himself at that. The disc material had worried him when they arrived at the star two
days ago. Lady Mac had jumped deep into the system, emerging three million kilometres above the