"01 - Code of the Lifemaker" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hogan James P)

Sometimes, of course, things failed to work exactly as intended, but the
alien engineers had created their own counterpart of Murphy and allowed for
his law in their plans. Maintenance robots took care of breakdowns and
routine wear and tear in the factory; troubleshooting programs tracked down
causes of production rejects and adjusted the machines for drifting
tolerances; breakdown teams brought in malfunctioning machines for repair;
and specialized scavenging robots roamed the surface in search of wrecks,
write-off's, discarded components, and any other likely sources of parts
suitable for recycling.

Time passed, the factory hummed, and the robot population grew in number
and variety. When the population had attained a critical size, a mixed
workforce detached itself from the main center of activity and migrated a
few miles away to build a second factory, a replica of the first, using
materials supplied initially from Factory One. When Factory Two became
self-sustaining, Factory One, its primary task accomplished, switched to
mass-production mode, producing goods and materials for eventual shipment
to the alien home planet.

While Factory Two was repeating the process by commencing work on Factory
Three, the labor detail from Factory One picked up its tools and moved on
to begin Factory Four. By the time Factory Four was up and running,
Factories Five through Eight were already taking shape, Factory Two was in
mass-production mode, and Factory Three was building the first of a fleet
of cargo vessels to carry home the products being stockpiled. This
self-replicating pattern would spread rapidly to transform the entire
surface of Zeus IV into a totally automated manufacturing complex dedicated
to supplying the distant alien civilization from local resources.

From within the searcher's control computers, the Supervisor program gazed
out at the scene through its data input channels and saw that its work was
good. After a thorough overhaul and systems checkout, the searcher ship
reembarked its primary workforce and launched itself into space to seek
more worlds on which to repeat the cycle.

FIFTY YEARS LATER

Not farЧas galactic distances goЧfrom Zeus was another star, a hot, bluish
white star with a mass of over fifteen times that of the Sun. It had formed
rapidly, and its life spanЧthe temporary halt of its collapse under
self-gravitation by thermonuclear radiation pressureЧhad demanded such a
prodigious output of energy as to be a brief one. In only ten million years
the star, which had converted all the hydrogen in its outer shell to
helium, resumed its collapse until the core temperature was high enough to
bum the helium into carbon, and then, when the helium was exhausted,
repeated the process to begin burning carbon. The ignition of carbon raised
the core temperature higher still, which induced a higher rate of carbon
burning, which in turn heated the core even more, and a thermonuclear
runaway set in which in terms of stellar timescales was instantaneous. In