"Michael McCollum - Thunderstrike" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCollum Michael)

THUNDERSTRIKE!

A Novel By

Michael McCollum



Sci Fi - Arizona, Inc.

Third Millennium Publishing

A Cooperative of Online Writers and Resources




PART 1: VISITOR FROM THE DEEP BLACK

CHAPTER 1


For millions of years, the sun had merely been the brightest point of light in the sky, a cold beacon little
different from the thousands of others visible in the ebon firmament. Now it was growing perceptibly
larger month by month, year by year. The change was not without precedent. A billion years earlier, the
planetoid had collided with a bit of orbiting debris out beyond Pluto. The force of the impact had altered
its orbit forever. One hundred eleven times the planetoid had plunged deep into the fires of the inner
Solar system, whirled quickly around the sun, and then retreated once more into the cold black. The
ordeal had been presaged each time by a brightening of the distant yellow star.

About the time the sun began to show a visible disk, the ice plains and cliffs began to stir with
ethereal winds as hydrogen and oxygen frost turned slowly to vapor. Initially these winds were as
insubstantial as wraiths, little more than individual molecules escaping the planetoidтАЩs weak
gravitation. Later, when the sun had grown still larger in the sky, the snowy surface began to
emit gentle puffs of gas, dust, and vapor. Weak though it was, the planetoidтАЩs gravity was
sufficient to wrap it with a wisp of vacuum-thin fog. By the time the flying mountain crossed the
orbit of Uranus, the fog had grown thick enough to obscure it from anyone who might pick it out
among the background stars.

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Amber Hastings sat at her desk and wistfully watched Farside ObservatoryтАЩs big
hundred-meter-effective compound telescope swing ponderously into position. Her vantage point was
almost directly up-sun from the giant instrument. As she watched, lengthening black shadows stretched
across the floor of Mendeleev Crater. The view was from one of the pylon cameras situated to provide
a panoramic view of the Solar SystemтАЩs largest astronomical instrument. In the background, the
grey-brown wall of the craterтАЩs western rim thrust above the curved horizon in stark relief unsoftened by
atmosphere.

The telescope appeared to be a species of giant metal flower springing forth from LunaтАЩs airless, sterile