"Michael McCollum - Antares 01 - Antares Dawn" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCollum Michael)

overabundance of stellar births in the spiral arms was one that had long plagued astronomers and
cosmologists.

Sulieman spent the remainder of his life improving on his theories. At the age of 92, he proved that the
sixth-dimensional foldlines are distorted by the fifth-dimensional curvature that is gravity in much the same
way that a lens distorts a ray of light. Sulieman demonstrated mathematically that whenever a foldline
encounters a star-size mass, it is тАЬfocusedтАЭ into a restricted volume of space. Usually, the effect is so
small as to be undetectable. Sometimes, however, the тАЬfocusтАЭ is sufficiently sharp that a weakness
appears in the fabric of the space-time continuum, and afoldpoint is formed.

Twenty years after SuliemanтАЩs death, scientists discovered a practical use for foldpoints. They positioned
a spaceship within one of the two foldpoints known to exist within the solar system and released copious
quantities of energy in a precisely controlled pattern intended to warp space even further. The energy
release caused the ship to drop into foldspace, thereby instantaneously transporting it to the next weak
point along the foldline. One moment the research ship was floating high above the sun; the next, it was in
orbit about LuytenтАЩs Star, some 12.5 light-years distant.

There was no holding the human race back after that. The Great Migration began almost immediately.
Over the next several centuries, the leakage of population into space became a flood. The pattern of the
migration was determined entirely by the shape of foldspace. While some stars were found to possess
only a single foldpoint, others possessed two, three, or more. The biggest, most massive stars were
discovered to be especially fertile ground for foldpoint production. The red super-giant star Antares was
the champion throughout human space. Antares had six foldpoints, a fact that made it the linchpin of a
network of star systems on the eastern edge of human expansion.

Since the foldlines were aligned with the spiral arm that contains Sol, humanity found it easiest to expand
along the axis of the arm. Distances between colonies were figured, not by the spatial distance between
their respective stars; but rather, by the number of foldpoints between them. In order to reach the star
next door, it was sometimes necessary to first jump to one five hundred light-years distant, then double
back.

Early in the great migration, survey ships searching the systems of the Antares Cluster (those stars
associated with the foldline hub in the Antares system) found an Earth-like planet circling an unnamed G3
spectral class star some 490 light-years from Sol. They named the starNapier (after the shipтАЩs captain)
and its single habitable planetNewProvidence . Charter companies were formed and vast quantities of
resources were poured into the system. New Providence prospered and attained self-sufficiency in less
than a hundred years. As the colony matured, it too began to look around for stellar systems in which to
invest its excess capital and manpower.

The Napier system was close enough to the giant Antares to be affected by the larger starтАЩs warpage of
foldspace. Because of this interaction, New Providence was blessed with more than its fair share of
foldpoints. In addition to the foldpoint leading to Antares, there were two additional gateways in the
system. Beyond both foldpoints were systems containing prime real estate in the form of Earth-class
worlds.

With the New Providence colony firmly established, these additional systems became the targets for two
competing colonization drives. The better funded of these concentrated on the metal-rich
Hellsgatesystem . The smaller colonization effort was left with the job of establishing a colony in the
system of an F8 dwarf identified only by its catalog number. The New Providence colonists in this latter
system gave their new home world the name ofAlta . They named their starValeria , and quickly