"C. Sanford Lowe & G. David Nordley - Imperfect Gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lowe C Sanford)

IMPERFECT GODS
by C. Sanford Lowe & G. David Nordley

People must act on the best information they have. But what if thereтАЩs no way to
check it?

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[Insert Pic AFF1206Story03.jpg Here]
Illustration by William R. Warren, Jr.
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Chapter 1

Spaceport, Planet New Antarctica,

Erebus System, 12 April 2272

SheтАЩs on that ship, Naomi Abila thought as she watched the incoming
interplanetary shuttle rise slowly in the far north like a supernova kicked loose from
the firmament, a brilliant point of light that got higher and brighter every second. As
it grew brighter and nearer, it began a majestic sweep eastward and inscribed a thin,
glowing trace across Canis Major and then Orion. Gently, its path curved back until
it was again headed directly for their base on New Antarctica.

Naomi smiled at her son, Sasha. She worried that he might resent having
another person becoming, effectively, lead on New AntarcticaтАЩs part of the project
to create a mini black hole. That had been pretty much hers up to now. On the other
hand, he idolized Dr. Brunhilda Kremer for solving the Quark star minimum mass
problem, all the more since the story had arrived of how she helped derail an attempt
to sabotage the project back in SolтАЩs System. And, of course, in a time when age
difference no longer mattered, Dr. Kremer was single.

The glow faded from blue-white to dull red to nothing. Flood beams stabbed
up past the tiny yellow disk of their local giant planet, Amundsen, into the Milky
Way and found their target, a tiny ball so reflective it might have been made of liquid
mercury. Rapidly it descended toward them. At first it seemed like a small chromium
moon, then, as it dropped lower, NaomiтАЩs perspective changed, and she saw the
light scatter off a teardrop hull as big as a hill and shiny as a mirror.

A beam of brilliant green glowing plasma lanced up from the landing area and
blossomed into a violet flower just beneath the broad part of the hull where its force
spent itself against a silent expanse. Distant ice fields around their тАЬdry islandтАЭ city
glowed in response.

The spacecraft slowed and followed the beam down toward the landing zone
with the ponderous stateliness of objects of its scale. A hundred meters up, the
plasma flickered out and the two-hundred-meter-long teardrop settled down through
wind-whipped snow as if held by some giant hand. The sight of a thousand tons of
mass effortlessly floating on magnetic fields never failed to inspire awe in Naomi. At
times like this her mind went back to ancient legends; we are heirs of Prometheus,