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

message to the Board of Trustees in about ten minutes.

He turned back to Bartlett. тАЬGet that data reduced fast. I want everything you can deduce about the
source in the next five minutes. I will need it for my squirt to Earth. I also want every instrument we have
focused on this contact. Aeneas, too. Understood?тАЭ

Gruenmeier stopped, suddenly aware of the expressions of his subordinates. тАЬWhatтАЩs the matter with you
two? Hop to it!тАЭ

Chala frowned. тАЬWhatтАЩs the matter, Julius? What is it?тАЭ

тАЬDonтАЩt you see? We have a phantom source of high-energy particles moving away from the sun at
300,000 kps on a vector straight toward Procyon. That can mean only one thing.тАЭ

тАЬTheyтАЩre back, damn it. TheyтАЩre back!тАЭ

#

Chryse Haller watched openmouthed as the starship completed its approach and began тАЬstation keepingтАЭ
near the probeтАЩs bow. The daycruiser, that floated motionless in space some two hundred meters over
her head, was dwarfed in comparison to the great metal-gray sphere. She craned her neck and let her
eyes drink in a myriad of construction details. Everything she saw seemed to support the hypothesis that
the behemoth was extra-solar in origin. Yet, the starship did not give her the same impression of alienness
that the probe did. There was something familiar about its lines.

She was so startled by the thought that she spent a few precious seconds analyzing it. Understanding
came to her from a surprising direction.

Chryse Haller was an aficionado of old movies. Not the old movies of her motherтАЩs or grandmotherтАЩs
times, but the prehistoric works originally recorded on real celluloid, in 2-D, and frequently in
black-and-white. The simple, uncomplicated lifestyles attracted her, making her wish she had been born
four centuries earlier. Besides, at age twelve she had fallen in love with Errol Flynn.

In college, she had written a paper on the flaw of ethnocentrism (the egotistical assumption that things will
always remain the same as they are now) that seemed to have been universal in the early cinema. Her
subject had been the space adventures predating the first Moon landing - theBuck Rogers andFlash
Gordon serials,Destination Moon ,The Conquest of Space , and a few others. Each epic was filled
with spaceships that were little more than obvious lineal descendants of the airplanes of the time. Even
after man had gained a toehold in space, movie rockets continued to be aerodynamically sleek machines
that darted about in maneuvers highly reminiscent of aerial combat.

The future, when it came, was nothing like that at all. Except for the shuttles and ferries that plied the
routes between the EarthтАЩs spaceports and low orbit, the ships of space were functional, ugly things. Like
the probe beneath her boots, they were collections of geometric shapes hung together by naked beams,
with all manner of things jutting out at odd angles.
The newly arrived starship was different. True, it was no winged needle, but it was streamlined. There
seemed to be no protuberances at all. Nor was this smoothness of line an accident. The starshipтАЩs skin
was broken by numerous airlocks, cargo hatches, machinery that might (or might not) be waste heat
radiators, communications gear, and things that were not readily identifiable. There were even a number
of lighted, oval windows arranged in circular rows around one end of the ship. At the center of the lighted