"James P. Hogan - Giants 2 - The Gentle Giants of Ganymede" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hogan James P)

aides in the heart of the mother-ship Shapieron two thousand miles above
Iscaris III. He listened without interruption to the account of the situation.
The chief scientist, speaking from elsewhere in the ship, confirmed that in
the past few minutes sensors aboard the Shapieron had yielded data similar to
that reported by instruments from the surface of Iscaris III, and that the
computers had produced the same interpretation. The G-beam projectors had
caused some unforeseen and catastrophic change in the internal equilibrium of
Iscaris, and the star was in the process of turning into a nova. There was no
time to think of anything but escape.
"We have to get everybody off the surface," Garuth said. "Leyel, the
first thing I need is a statement of what ships you've got down there at the
moment, and how many personnel they can bring up. We'll send down extra
shuttles to ferry out the rest as soon as we know what your shortage in
carrying capacity is. Monchar..." He addressed his deputy on another of the
screens. "Do we have any ships more than fifteen hours out from us at maximum
speed?"
"No, sir. The farthest away is out near Projector Two. It could make it
back in just over ten."
"Good. Recall them all immediately, emergency priority. If the figures
we've just heard are right, the only way we'll stand a chance of getting clear
is on the Shapieron's main drives. Prepare a schedule of expected arrival
times and make sure that preparations for reception have been made."
"Yes, sir."
"Leyel..." Garuth switched his gaze back to look straight out of the
screen in Room 14 of the Observatory Dome. "Bring all your available ships up
to flight-readiness and begin planning your evacuation at once. Report back on
status one hour from now. One bag of personal belongings only per person."
"May I remind you of a problem, sir." The chief engineer of the
Shapieron, Rogdar Jassilane, added from the drive section of the ship.
"What is it, Rog?" Garuth's face turned away to look at another screen.
"We still have a fault on the primary retardation system for the main-
drive toroids. If we start up those drives, the only way they'll ever slow
down again is at their own natural rate. The whole braking system's been
stripped down. We could never put it together again in under twenty hours, let
alone trace the fault and fix it."
Garuth thought for a moment. "But we can start them up okay?"
"We can," Jassilane confirmed. "But once those black holes start
whirling round inside the toroids, the angular momentum they'll build up will
be phenomenal. Without the retardation system to slow them down, they'll take
years to coast down to a speed at which the drives can be deactivated. We'd be
under main drive all the time, with no way of shutting down." He made a
helpless gesture. "We could end up anywhere."
"But we've no choice," Garuth pointed out. "It's fly or fry. We'll have
to set course for home and orbit the Solar System under drive until we've
dropped to a low enough return velocity. What other way is there?"
"I can see what Rog's getting at," the chief scientist interjected.
"It's not quite as simple as that. You see, at the velocities that we would
acquire under years of sustained main drive, we'd experience an enormous
relativistic time-dilation compared to reference frames moving with the speed
of Iscaris or Sol. Since the Shapieron would be an accelerated system, much