"Antares - 03 - Antares Victory" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCollum Michael)

ANTARES VICTORY

By

Michael McCollum


Chapter 1
Admiral (First Rank) Richard Arthur Drake lay strapped in his acceleration couch
aboard the orbit-to-orbit shuttle and gazed at the glowing apparition that
covered half the ebon sky before him. Here in the Napier system, the Antares
Nebula was a hundred times larger than it was in the night skies of home.
The nebula was a lustrous ball of gas and dust as beautiful as it was deadly.
Its intricate network of swirls was a gossamer spider web suspended inside the
shell of a shimmering cosmic egg. Save for its seemingly solid central core, the
nebulaТs delicate filaments were nearly transparent until they approached its
outer shell, where they again took on the hue of a fluorescent glow tube. The
apparition was a reminder of the enormous cruel joke that GodЕ or Mother Nature,
or Saint Murphy, or someoneЕ had played on Drake, his wife, humanity, and yes,
even the Ryall.
Six years earlier, Antares had been the brightest star decorating the night sky
of DrakeТs home planet, Alta. The baleful red spothadhad dominated the winter
firmamenteverforallthecenturies since colonists first set foot
onaworldthatwastheblue-whiteworld that wasin many waysa virtually thetwintoof
Mother Earth. For four hundred and thirty winters, Antares had been the
real-life version of the red stars with which Altan children decorated theirfala
bushes at Christmastime, an ochre beacon hoveringlow over the Colgate Mountain
Rangeeach eveningafter sunset.. Then, at 17:30 hours on the night of Aquarius
16, 2637,withinamatterofminutes, the ruby starhad undergone had undergonea
breathtaking transformation. Its reddish huehad turned the color of an electric
sparkthat burneda billion times brighter thanhadthe old Antares. IIn a matter
of minutes, the dying ember ofastarblossomedblossomedPhoenix-liketo becomeinto
the brighteststarobject in the galaxy.
To those who observed the newborn electric sparkhigh above the city of Homeport,
there was no mystery as to what hadhappened. The cause of the
transformationwashad been obvious.
Antares had been well into its dotage long before human beings discovered
startravel. For thousands of years, the red supergiantstarhadprofligately
consumedhydrogen, heedless of the day when that fuel must inevitably run out.
That day came in 2512(standard calendar). WithAntares,thelinchpintothenothing
left to burn, the fusion reaction thathad longpoweredAntaresТ inner
engineflickered,anddied. With no internally generated heat to oppose the pull of
gravity, the core of the red giantcollapsed. Gigatons of star stuff
gaveupitsenergy of position as it slid down the gravity well, causing the
surrounding temperature tojumpmore than a billion degreesin an instant. The
release of so much energy in so short a timetriggerednewfusion, whichgenerated
yet moreenergy. Therunaway reactioncould not be contained.
Antaresexploded intothe largestsupernovaever observed by human beings.
The universe is a very large place, especially when measured in terms of the
veritable crawlthatis lightspeed. The distance between Antares and Alta was such