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

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

AUTHORтАЩS BIOGRAPHY


Antares and Spica Foldspace Clusters
 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 nebulaтАЩs 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 GodтАж or Mother Nature, or Saint Murphy, or someoneтАж 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 DrakeтАЩs home planet,
Alta. The baleful red spothad dominated the winter firmamentever since colonists first set foot
ontheblue-whiteworld that wasin many waysa virtualtwinto 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, the ruby starhad undergone a breathtaking
transformation. In a matter of minutes, the dying emberblossomedPhoenix-liketo become the brighteststar 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 transformationwas 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). Withnothing left to burn, the fusion reaction
thathad longpoweredAntaresтАЩ 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 that it tookthenovawavefront125 years to cross
the gulf of space betweenthem. When thefirst photonsfrom the explosionfinally reached the colony world, they
burst forthin a phenomenonthatquickly became known as Antares dawnlight. However, as impressive as the
giant starтАЩs funeral pyrewasduring those first few weeks,in one important respect,its appearancehad been
anticlimactic.
Scientists have long known that thecataclysmic flashthat marksasupernovais merely a minor side
effectofwhat isreally taking place. In addition to outshining allother starsin the galaxy, a supernova produces a
titanic storm of particles across the subatomic spectrum. Whiletheseandmanyothereffects are of interest only