"The Collapsium" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mccarthy Wil)

"They nearly did," she said, her voice hinting at sadness. "And no, I didn't
think you'd refuse me. But you do insist on being difficult. One has to approach
Bruno de Towaji in very particular ways, I'm afraid. Even if one is Queen of all
humanity."
He hoped his scowl was impressive. "I'm your servant, Tam. As always. Lead me to
your fax machine, and think no more of it. We leave at once!"
3
In which an impressive structure is examined
They stepped through the ship's fax gate to a worker's platform: a flat,
domed-over plate of di-clad neutronium large enough to host a volleyball match.
Bruno's breath caught in his throat. "Good Lord," he said.
"Yes," Her Majesty agreed coolly.
DiamondЧthe crystalline form of carbonЧis beautiful because its high index of
refraction causes the light passing through it to be trapped and split. The
stone itself is clear to the eye, but the light that enters is forcedЧvery much
against its willЧto slow down, to bend, to bounce from shallow edges as though
they were mirrors. Upon striking a diamond, a ray of white light may find its
red and yellow and green components shunted onto wildly different paths, a
phenomenon commonly known as "sparkle."
When diamond surrounds a core of degenerate matter, the effect is heightened
further by the Compton scattering of photons off the neutron surface. The usual
trite descriptionЧthat neutronium looks like white fog inside a gemЧmisses the
point entirely: it looks like nothing else in existence, more like a dream of
fog made solid. Very solid. But that was merely the view beneath Bruno's and
Tamra's feet. Above their heads, wellЕ
Even di-clad neutronium is dull as cut glass next to the haunting light of
collapsium, inside which a sundered light beam can circle for days or weeks, or
until the end of time. Just as the speed of light is higher in air than in
diamond, and higher still in the "vacuum" of empty space, so too is the speed of
light higherЧa trillion times higherЧin the Casimir supervacuum of the
collapsium lattice. "Cerenkov blue" is the radiation given off by swift
particles that find themselves slamming into a denser material and briefly
exceeding its speed of light, and it is this unearthly glow for which collapsium
is best known.
So imagine an arch of it filling the sky. Imagine a universe of stars reaching
up to infinity above you, pinpoint splashes of light filtering through and
around the collapsium. Imagine Sol beneath your feet, swollen and huge but
eclipsed by a disc of di-clad, invisible but for the effect of its light echoing
through the arch rising high above you.
Like choir music through the rafters of heaven, Bruno de Towaji would later
write, to be quoted out of context for tens of thousands of years. In truth the
passage continues, It was grand, enormous, an absurdity of unprecedented scale
and scope. A glimpse of heaven, yes, but as we dream it, beach monkeys fond of
glitter. If it's God we hope to impress, I daresay a tower of socks would serve
as well.
This by itself is significant: that even Bruno de Towaji, upon seeing the Ring
Collapsiter for the first time, reacted to it not as a work of engineering, but
of art.
"Astonishing," he conceded.
"Yes," Her Majesty could only agree. Her two robots stepped through, assuming