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

small yellow sun that was their destination, which, at the moment, was merely
the brightest point of light in the sky.
FaslornТs 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 FaslornТs 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
FaslornТs line would likely end with him.
УLook how it fills the sky,Ф his assistant said. Overhead the star brake had
expanded until it blotted out the cold point of light that had once been home.
FaslornТs gesture was the Phelan equivalent of a smile. УThat it does, Paldar.
It wonТt be long now before they notice us.Ф
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 craftТs capacious fuel tanks. Ten days
later, assuming no glitches were found during the complex countdown, humanityТs
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 the time had come to begin explorations of the
nearer stars. In a paper published in theSystem Journal for Astrophysics ,
Pierce laid out the parameters for a successful interstellar crossing. PierceТs
starship was no fanciful faster-than-light speedster, but rather a craft
requiring most of a human lifetime to make the journey. At the end of his paper,
he exhorted his colleagues to build an instrumented probe as a demonstration