"Daniel Keys Moran - Lord November" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moran Daniel Keys)

Copyright 1994 by Daniel Keys Moran.
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I, Daniel Keys Moran, "The Author," hereby release this text as freeware. It may be transmitted as a text
file anywhere in this or any other dimension, without reservation, so long as the story text is not altered
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DESCRIPTION: Prolog and first two chapters of the novel "Lord November: The Man-Spacething
War."

Lord November:
The Man-Spacething War
A Tale of the Continuing Time

Prolog:
The Shepherds
2049 Gregorian

On Tuesday, October 5, 2049, a starship of the Zaradin Church exited Sol System's Second Gate.
Not just any starship; this was a Cathedral, one of nine to be found in the galaxy. Sol's Second Gate
lies outside the orbit of Saturn, and far off the ecliptic; but had the Cathedral stayed at the Second Gate
long enough, darkened though it was, humanity would have found it in time, through its gravitational
disturbance upon the orbits of the other bodies in the System. It was that large.
The Dalmastran who crewed the Cathedral did not plan to stay long enough for that to happen. They
had more important business than this minor matter, the collection of a species that had so recently begun
to boast of its existence, pouring radio waves and television and lasers indiscriminately out into the
interstellar darkness. They did not want their existence known to humanity-- not out of any concern for
humanity's reaction, but because they did not want the sleem empire to know they had passed this way.
And as they had already observed, humans were distressingly disinclined to keep silent about
themselves, or, the Dalmastran presumed, about those they met.
The Dalmastran's concern about the empire might have been over-cautious; some in the Church
thought so. True, the sleem had been growing restless, had more than once recently interfered in the
travel of the Church's emissaries. But it was a grand leap, to go from harassing the servants of the
Church, to interfering with the business of one of the great Cathedrals.
The Dalmastran did not think that the empire would be so foolish--but the sleem had been disturbingly
arrogant of late, and the Dalmastran had been taught, by the Zaradin themselves, to avoid confrontation
over matters not involving theology.
They studied the Solar System for several days, its scattering of planets, moons and asteroids and
comets; listened to the broadband echoes of radio and television and InfoNet, and came to their
decision.
A Missionary fell in toward the Sun.
Peter Janssen followed a Hoffman trajectory, heading down to an orbit some 125,000 kilometers
above the cloudy surface of Jupiter. He was already 240,000 klicks above the clouds, and dropping; it