"The Clouds Of Saturn" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCollum Michael)

reminder of just how insignificant human beings are on the scale of the
universe.
Dalishaar let his gaze sweep down the darkened horizon to where the base of The
Arch dropped behind the cloud walls of the North Temperate Belt. Stretched out
as far as he could see were the cities of the Northern Alliance. In two weeks,
they would be passing the Dardenelles Cyclone. The cyclone was a giant storm
that intruded into the flyway, narrowing it to less than one-quarter its normal
six thousand kilometer width. Since even the cycloneТs outermost winds could
blow a cloud city off course, the storm was always given a wide berth. They
would be literally hugging the northern cloud wall of the flyway during the
passage.
The move north took place at approximately the same time every standard year as
the AllianceТs swift passage around Saturn brought it into phase with the
equally swift moving thousand-year-old storm. As the fifty Alliance cities
maneuvered into line astern order, they bunched closer than at any other time.
The sight was a reminder that the Alliance was growing steadily year-by-year.
Kelt Dalishaar had often thought that he had been born into the wrong century.
Back before the sun had gone awry, the human race had seemed to be evolving
toward maturity. The ancient nation-states and their inefficient partitioning of
resources had slowly given way to a larger international order. In another few
centuries, the human race would have been truly united for the first time in its
history.
The discovery that the sun was flaring out of control had actually accelerated
the process for a time. For more than a hundred years, humans had put aside
their bickering to work together against the traitor star. At first, they had
tried to find a way to protect the home planet. When that had failed, they had
cooperated in evacuating the race to the upper reaches of SaturnТs atmosphere.
Most had expected the cooperation to continue. They had been badly mistaken.
The advent of the cloud city had brought with it a disintegration of human
social order. On Earth, people had largely been confined to the nations into
which they were born. That was because their cities were tied to a particular
geographic location. The free flying cities of Saturn, however, could go where
they would. Thus, it was easy for a dissident city to seek other associations if
they were unhappy with their rulers. Though some hailed this as an expansion of
freedom, Kelt Dalishaar saw it as the road to anarchy. It was his goal and that
of the Northern Alliance to someday to bring Saturn under a single political
administration.
As he gazed at the line of cities astern, DalishaarТs eyes dropped to the lights
of Cloudcroft itself. The habitat barrier was close enough above him that he
could feel the heat radiating from the main hydrogen gasbag overhead. Although
transparent and relatively non-reflecting, the barrier did reflect those lights
out near the edge of the city. The reflections created a phantom line of
illumination just beyond the cityТs rim, a Уbarrier reefФ as Dalishaar was fond
of calling the illusion.
His attention was drawn to a line of strobing lights far off in the distance. He
recognized the hull beacons of an approaching ship. It was, he decided, one of
the big dirigibles transporting prisoners from New Philadelphia. He scowled as
he remembered how the Militarists had pushed their plan to conquer the
geneticists through the Alliance Council. The council had adopted the scheme
against DalishaarТs advice. The Militarists were now stronger because of their