"Michael McCollum - The Sails of Tau Ceti" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCollum Michael)

giant, unseen claw.

Far behind the starship, a giant flower opened its petals to space, marking the end of a voyage that had
lasted more than three Phelan lifetimes. It was a voyage that had begun in fire and would end by grazing
the photosphere of the small yellow sun that was their destination, which, at the moment, was merely the
brightest point of light in the sky.

FaslornтАЩs would likely be the last generation of Phelan to live their lives between the stars. Within a few
dozentarn , they would encounter the thinking beings of the yellow sun. It was FaslornтАЩs task, and that of
his shipmates, to win a home among the strange bipedal creatures that styled themselvesHomo sapiens .
If he were successful, the next generation of Phelan would be born with solid ground rather than steel
deck beneath their feet. If not, then FaslornтАЩs line would likely end with him.

тАЬLook how it fills the sky,тАЭ his assistant said. Overhead the star brake had expanded until it blotted out
the cold point of light that had once been home.
FaslornтАЩs gesture was the Phelan equivalent of a smile. тАЬThat it does, Paldar. It wonтАЩt be long now before
they notice us.тАЭ

As the commander ofFar Horizons watched the continuing dance of deployment, he thought of the
difficult task ahead. It was somehow symbolic that the stars behind were slowly being blotted out by
reflections of the stars ahead.

Far Horizonswas committed. There would be no turning back. The fate of two intelligent species would
be decided by what happened next.


1 Starhopper



CHAPTER 1


The ruddy orb of Mars covered one full quadrant of star flecked sky and flooded the transparent dome
with a ruby light. As beautiful as the sight was, Victoria Bronson had eyes only for the pyramid shaped
collection of fuel tanks and piping silhouetted against the planet. After twenty years of planning and three
years of construction,Starhopper was nearly ready. Soon tankers would pump a hundred thousand tons
of liquid hydrogen into the craftтАЩs capacious fuel tanks. Ten days later, assuming no glitches were found
during the complex countdown, humanityтАЩs first visitor to another star would be hurled outbound on its
long journey into the deep black.

People had dreamed of travel to the stars for almost as long as they had known the tiny points of light
were distant suns. While poets wrote paeans to starflight, engineers bemoaned the prodigious energies
involved. Writers of escapist fiction dreamed up fantastic schemes for flitting between stellar systems,
while physicists attacked the problem with no less imagination. Scientists speculated that wormholes,
extra spatial dimensions, or warped space-time might prove to be chinks in the armor of the Einstein
barrier. Unfortunately, the efforts of the scientists proved no more effective than those of the poets and
writers. Despite everything, the stars remained uncomfortably beyond the outstretched grasp of humanity.

That is, until the year 2217. In that year, a young Martian physicist named Dardan Pierce suggested that