"Michael McCollum - Maker 2 - Procyion Promise" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCollum Michael)

PROCYONтАЩS PROMISE

A Novel By

Michael McCollum


Sci Fi - Arizona, Inc.

Third Millennium Publishing

An Online Cooperative of Writers and Resources


PROLOGUE: THE MAKERS

PROLOGUE


The Makers had never heard ofHomo sapiens Terra , nor would they have been particularly impressed
if they had. By their standards, mankind had little to brag about. The MakersтАЩ cities were old when
Australopithecus first ventured out onto the plains of Africa. By the timeHomo erectus was lord of the
Earth, they had touched each of the twelve planets that circled their KO sun.

Individually, Makers were long lived, industrious, and generally content. Their population was stabilized
at an easily supported fifty billion and war was an ancient nightmare not discussed in polite company. So,
when the Makers came to the limits of their stellar system, it was with a sense of adventure that they
prepared to venture out into the great blackness beyond.

The first ships to leave the Maker sun were тАШslowboatsтАЩ, huge vessels that took a lifetime to visit the
nearer stars. After three dozen such ventures, the Makers found they had made two important
discoveries. The first was that life is pervasive throughout the universe. Nearly every stellar system
studied had a planet in the temperate zone where water is liquid. Such worlds were found to be teeming
with life. More exciting to the Maker scientists, on twelve percent of the worlds visited, evolutionary
pressures had led to the development of intelligence. Two were the homes of civilizations nearly as
advanced as the MakersтАЩ own.

The second great intellectual discovery was the realization that the Galaxy is a very large place, much too
large to be explored by slowboat. In a spirit of curiosity more than anything else, the Makers set out to
circumvent the one thing that retarded their progress. They began searching for a means to exceed the
speed of light A million years of scientific endeavor had taught them that the first step in any new project
is to develop a rational theory of the phenomenon to be studied. The Makers, being who they were, did
not stop when they had one theory of how faster-than-light might be achieved.

They developed two.

Each was supported by an impressive body of experimental evidence and astronomical observation.
Each should have resulted in the development of an FTL drive. Yet, every effort for a hundred thousand
years ended in failure.
There is a limit to the quantity of resources any civilization can divert to satisfy an itch of its curiosity