"Procyon's Promise" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCollum Michael)

CHAPTER 1PROCYONТS 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 MakersТ cities were old whenAustralopithecus 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 СslowboatsТ, 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
MakersТ 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 bump. The FTL program had long since passed the
point of economic viability. Yet, the effort continued apace. For while the
Makers were mounting their assault on the light barrier, they found a more
compelling reason than mere curiosity to break free of their prison.