"Zach Hughes - Tiger in the Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Zach)

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Tiger in the Stars by Zach
Hughes
CHAPTER ONE
I, John Plank, being of sound mind and having telescopes for eyes and
electronic sensors for fingertips, must be going mad.

I am alive. I think. I see. I feel. But I can't move my arms or my legs.
Where are my arms and my legs? I am a man, have been a man for
years, and a man does not see the stars as if looking through telescopes.

The stars crowded him. They were impossibly huge, improbably near.
Stars are, unless you're close to a system, a sprinkle of light, tiny things.
They are not huge, individual suns seen everywhere as if you were looking
at old Sol from the Earth.

He could see a galaxy shaped like a small-crowned, wide-brimmed hat.
Near that galaxy was a double whorl of merged galaxies, their bright
hearts aglow. He was dazed by the richness, the brightness of the colors.
Hot, population-one stars were rich blue. A cool, red giant, the nearest
star, sported a family of planets: four gas giants, a distant icy midget of a
planet, two planets near or in the life zone, which he could see, feel. The
gas giants sent out snarls of radio waves. One emanated more heat than it
received from its sun and he could make it out, could measure that heat
output.

No man could do that.

His senses were acute. They covered the known spectrum. He saw long
and short light waves, radiation; he detected the force of the star's
gravitational field, could see the huge gouts of flame shooting upward in a
solar flare, could measure the solar wind.

No man could, with his own senses, see so much, hear so much. He
flexed his hands and felt the working of wondrous mechanisms spreading
over a huge area, connected by thousands of intricate electrical circuits.

His attention was caught by a glowing nebula. Vivid colors pleased his
senses and he realized that he was seeing the nebula not with human eyes
but as if he were looking through a series of filters.

He sensed movement.