"Richard A" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lupoff Richard A)

Earth lay once more tranquil and prosperous beneath a glowing and
benevolent sun.
The menace of the Deep Ones, at least for the time, was over.
And billions of kilometers from Earth, humanity renewed its heroic thrust
toward the outermost regions of the solar system.

MARCH 15, 2337
"Not yet," Shoten Binayakya's voice clattered.
"Soon," Gomati countered. She hooked into Khons's radar sensor, letting
cyborged biots convert incoming pulses into pseudo-visuals. "Look!" she
exclaimed, "It's a whole system!"
Njord Freyr stirred, determined to pull his attention away from
frustration, direct it toward a topic that would involve. "There, there,"
he heard Gomati's voice, not sure whether it was organic or synthesized,
"Shift your input to ultra-v!"
Njord, hooking into Khons's external sensors, complied.
"Astounding!"
"Yet so."
"Not unprecedented. On the contrary," Shoten Binayakya interjected. "All
the giants have complex systems of moons. Jupiter. Saturn. Uranus. Search
your memory banks if you don't recall."
Surlily, Njord sped unnecessary inquiry to an implanted cyberbiot. "Mmh,"
he grunted. "So. Almost thirty significant satellites among them. Plus the
trash. So." He nodded.
"And this new giant -- ?"
"Not new," Njord corrected. "It's been there all along, as long as any of
the others. You know the old Laplace notion of elder planets and younger
planets was abandoned about the same time as the solid atom and the flat
Earth."
"Good work, Freyr," Shoten shot sarcastically.
"Well then?"
Sri Gomati said, "Clearly, Njord, Shoten meant newly discovered." She
paused for a fraction of a second. "And about to be newly visited."
Njord breathed a sigh of annoyance. "Well. And that old European,
what's-his-name, Galapagos saw the major moons of Jupiter seven hundred
years ago. All the others followed as soon as the optical telescope was
developed. They didn't even need radiation sensors, no less probes to find
them. Seven hundred years."
"Seven hundred twenty-seven, Njord." Sri Gomati petted him gently on his
genitals.
"You and your obsession with ancient history! I don't see how you
qualified for this mission, Gomati, always chasing after obscure
theorizers and writers!"
"It's hardly an obsession. Galileo was one of the key figures in the
history of science. And he found the four big Jovian moons in 1610. It's
simple arithmetic to subtract that from 2337 and get seven-two-seven. I
didn't even have to call on a cyberbiot to compute that, Njord dear."
"Argh!" The flesh remnants in Njord's face grew hot.
Shoten Binayakya interrupted the argument. "There it comes into visual
range!" he exclaimed. "After these centuries, the perturbations of Uranus