"Michael McCollum - The Void" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCollum Michael)

located high above the galactic spiral. For two-thirds of a standard year they had slipped upward from
where humanity's million-plus stars floated among a hundred billion unexplored brethren, climbing nearly
to the halo of ancient blue suns that englobed the flattened disk and bulging central mass of the galaxy.

Warwind's objective was the Extragalactic Tachyon Observatory, the largest and most costly observing
tool ever created by human beings. For a starship to approach the universe's premier tachyon instrument
by stealth required careful piloting and not a little luck. For eight long months, Warwind 's crew had
monitored the superlight communications bands, searching for any hint that the observatory had noticed
the tachyons that streamed continuously out of their ship's engines as it climbed ever higher above the
galaxy. For all of that time, Tessa Hallowell had lived with the tension brought about by fear of
discovery, tension made worse by the knowledge that it would only take but a single warning to alert
New Rome and ensure the destruction of the Hegemonic fleet.

Nor was lack of an alarm necessarily evidence that they had not been spotted. Even in these non-military
times, a great deal of comm traffic was in code--whether originated by computers, diplomats, or merely
commercial concerns eager to keep their monied secrets. Also, the warning could have been disguised,
either as an innocuous message or by being buried in the astronomical data the observatory transmitted
back to the galaxy round the clock. A single nanosecond pulse was all that was needed to send the
Galactic Guard streaming away from their bases and toward the worlds of the Hegemony.

After eight months of worry, action had come as an anticlimax. Warwind had closed to within a hundred
thousand kilometers of the great observatory before launching her strike boats. Her marines had
grounded on the hull without incident and then proceeded to break in at a dozen different places. They
had been met, not by armed defenders, but rather by a staff more bewildered than resisting. The sheep
had submitted meekly as soon as they found armored wolves in their midst.

With surprise total and her victory complete, Captain Hallowell had sent the coded words so ancient that
few knew the language that had originated them. "Tora, Tora, Tora!" had whisked toward Hegemonic
Headquarters on a beam of modulated tachyons, to be instantly responded to with, "Make your
preparations, but hold for orders. H-hour is imminent!"

Suddenly, a tiny sphere appeared in the great blackness before them. With the galaxy at her back, it
seemed lost in an empty ebon sea. It expanded quickly and turned into a large habitat globe, almost
mundane in its ordinariness. There were literally tens of millions of these islands of hospitality scattered
throughout human space. Most orbited yellow suns that emulated (to a greater or lesser degree) the
warm glow of Father Sol. Others bathed in the ruddy rays of great stars the color of old coals, or flashed
with the actinic blue-white of nature's supergiants, or orbited close to many of the universe's countless
midget suns. Still others floated where every star was a dimensionless pinpoint and only the most
sensitive instruments could detect the pull of distant gravity. The standardized habitat modules were used
wherever men and women found themselves enveloped by vacuum. Out here there was nothing to
reflect off the white hull save the suffuse glow emanating from the Milky Way. Even so, the contrast with
the black backdrop and its myriad faint smudges of light made it seem as though the habitat globe was
illuminated by some internal fire.

The habitat was only the most visible portion of the observatory. Dispersed across a billion kilometers of
surrounding space were the sensors that collectively made up the tachyon "array." Invisible though the
sensors were, they were the reason Tessa's ship had been dispatched to this distant outpost. Here, high
above the galactic swirl, conditions were nearly perfect for "seeing" the superlight particles created in the
nuclear fires that burned at the heart of every star. Out here where space was virtually flat, where cosmic
gas and dust were nearly nonexistent, tachyon astronomers could watch the universe in real time,