"James P. Hogan - Giants 5 - Mission to Minerva" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hogan James P)

The Jevlenese never ceased regarding themselves as Lambians, and the Terrans
as ongoing rivals who would challenge them again if the opportunity arose. As
part of a plan to eliminate the perceived threat, they inaugurated a campaign
to retard the progress of Earth toward rediscovery of the sciences, while they
themselves absorbed Thurien technology and gained autonomy over their own
affairs. Fully human in form, they obstructed Earth's development by
infiltrating agents throughout history to spread irrational beliefs and found
cults of unreason, diverting energies from the path to reacquiring true
knowledge.

As the confidence and arrogance of the Jevlenese leaders grew, so did their
resentment of the restraint to their ambitions posed by the Thuriens.
Exploiting the innate inability of the Ganymean psyche to suspect motives,
they gained control of the surveillance operation that the Thuriens had set up
to keep a watch over Earth after the catastrophe that had befallen Minerva.
The Jevlenese fed falsified accounts to the Thuriens of a militarized Earth
poised to burst out from the Solar System, and by playing on the implications,
induced the Thuriens to devise countermeasures to isolate and contain the
threat. But the Jevlenese intent was to seize control of the countermeasures
themselves and contain the Thuriens, settle the score with their Cerian rivals
of old, and then take control of the system of Thurien-administered worlds
themselves. And the plan would have been fulfilled but for the reappearance of
a lost starship from the time of ancient Ganymean Minerva.

The scientific mission ship Shapieron was sent to conduct experiments on
altering the radiation dynamics of a distant star to assess the feasibility of
changing the Sun's output as an alternative solution to Minerva's problem if
the attempt based on atmospheric reengineering coupled with biological
modification failed. But the star went unstable, forcing the Shapieron to make
an emergency departure when partway through overhauling its drive system,
which operated by creating a local distortion of spacetime. The result was
that the ship experienced an artificially compounded time-dilation in which
twenty-five million years passed by before it was able to reintegrate with the
local solar reference frame, compared to only twenty years of ship's time.
Hence, it returned to find the configuration of the Solar System changed,
Minerva gone, and a new race of terrestrial humans spacefaring among the
planets.

The "Giants" came to Earth, where they were cordially received, and remained
for six months. But the most significant outcome of their presence was the
opening of the first direct contact between Earth and the Thuriens, bypassing
the Jevelenese intermediaries established by longstanding precedent. The story
of how the Jevlenese had schemed to retard Earth's development and
misrepresent its modern-day situation was finally exposed. In the ensuing
confrontation the Jevelenese, who had been secretly making military
preparations of their own, proclaimed their independence, staged a
demonstration of strength, and demanded submission from the Thuriens. But
their hand had been forced; the bid was premature and collapsed when the
Terrans and Thuriens working together turned the Jevlenese's own stratagem of
deception against them by inventing a fictitious Terran battle force