"Geoffrey A. Landis - Impact Parameter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Landis Geoffrey A)

absolute positions anyway. He was searching for modulated gamma-ray laser signals from alien
intelligences, and his search area was big enough that it really didn't matter if the absolute pointing was off
by a tiny bit. When he found a signal, a real signal, then he could go back and calibrate the scope.

But in twenty-two years of searching they had never found a signal.

He'd been with the old radiotelescope SETI group at Arecibo, listening in to the stars for alien radio
messages, hearing only the ocean-roar of static and the atonal singing of hydroxyl radicals. He'd been
part of a fruitless search at optical wavelengths, looking for alien lasers. Infrared and UV, no luck either.
Slowly the search had progressed up the spectrum. Not very many astronomers were left in the SETI
camp; most of them had drifted off into other fields when success never came. Ben was one of the last.
He had made a case that aliens could be sending their messages at the extremely high energy end of the
spectrum, using gamma-ray lasers to send narrow-beam look-I'm-here messages. It was enough of an
argument that he'd gotten GO status on the gamma ray satellite, but not enough to climb the priority
queue.

But knowing there was a problem with the telescope and not fixing it was something he just couldn't do.
It would just shuffle the problem onto the next observer, who likely needed the time just as badly as he
did. He sighed. "Boot up the calibration procedure, Raj. I'll message the institute, tell them we're using a
chunk of our time to do their job. Maybe they'll look fondly on us and give us some time out of the TOO
register later in the week, huh?"

Rajiv brightened up. "Really, you are thinking so? That would be very considerate of them, yes indeed.
Surely that is what they will be doing, you are quite right."

Right, hell. There were a hundred observers fighting for scraps of time on the satellite.

But it had to be done. He might as well feel virtuous about doing it. He and Rajiv buckled down to
work.

Half an hour later Omicron Ceti was still out of position. The telescope was working flawlessly. Rigel,
Aldeberan, Fomalhaut; all the calibration stars were rock steady. But Omicron Ceti was still out of
place.

He sighed. He'd never succeeded in recalibrating his ex-wife, either.

"It is maybe a software error?" asked Rajiv.

"Maybe," said Ben. "I can't make myself believe it, though. A software error that would just move one
star? Unlikely. Next to impossible."

"Is there something peculiar about this star?"

"Nothing I can think of. Red giant, maybe seventy, eighty parsecs away. Not the type of star we'd
ordinarily look at -- if it had planets, it swallowed them thousands of years ago when it went into the giant
phase."

"Nobody could be moving this star?"

Ben laughed. "No. No way the star could move."