"Larry Niven - Mote In God's Eye (Jerry Pournelle Co Author)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)
"But why?" Blaine heard. He looked up to see Sally Fowler at the bridge entranceway. His invitation to the passengers to come to the bridge when there was no emergency had worked out fine: Bury hardly ever made use of the privilege. "Why free fall so soon?" she asked.
"Need the power to make a signal," Blaine answered. "At this distance it'll use up a significant part of our engine power to produce the maser beam. We could overload the engines if we had to, but it's standard to coast for messages if there's no real hurry."
"Oh." She sat in Whitbread's abandoned chair. Rod swiveled his command seat to face her, wishing again that someone would design a free fall outfit for girls that didn't cover so much of their legs, or that brief shorts would come back into fashion. Right now skirts were down to calves on Sparta, and the provinces copied the Capital. For shipboard wear the designers produced pantaloon things, comfortable enough, but baggy...
"When do we get to New Scotland?" she asked.
"Depends on how long we stay off Dagda. Sinclair wants to do some outside work while we're dirtside." He took out his pocket computer and wrote quickly with the attached stylus. "Let's see, we're about one and a half billion kilometers from New Scotland, that's - uh, make it a hundred hours to turnover. About two hundred hours' travel time, plus what we spend on Dagda. And the time it takes to get to Dagda, of course. That's not so far, about twenty hours from here."
"So we'll still be a couple of weeks at least," she said. "I thought once we got here we'd-" She broke off, laughing. "It's silly. Why can't you invent something that lets you Jump around in interplanetary space? There's something faintly ridiculous about it, we went five light years in no time at all, now it takes weeks to get to New Scotland."
"Tired of us so soon? It's worse than that, really. It takes an insignificant part of our hydrogen to make a Jump- Well, it isn't trivial, but it's not a lot compared to what it'll take getting to New Scotland. I don't have enough fuel aboard to go direct, in fact not in less than a year, but there's more than enough to make a Jump. All that takes is enough energy to get into hyperspace."
Sally snared a cup of coffee from the steward. She was learning to drink Navy coffee, which wasn't like anything else in the Galaxy. "So we just have to put up with it," she said.
"Afraid so. I've been on trips where it was faster to drive over to another Alderson point, make a Jump, move around in the new system, Jump somewhere else, keep doing that until you come back to the original system at a different place-do all that and it would still be faster than merely to sail across the original system in normal space. But not this time, the geometry isn't right."
"Pity," she laughed. "We'd see more of the universe for the same price." She didn't say she was bored; but Rod thought she was, and there wasn't much he could do about it. He had little time to spend with her, and there weren't many sights to see.
"NOW HEAR THIS. STAND BY FOR FREE FALL." She barely had time to strap herself in before the drive cut out.
Chief Yeoman of Signals Lud Shattuck squinted into his aiming sight, his knobby fingers making incredibly fine adjustments for such clumsy appendages. Outside MacArthur's hull, a telescope hunted under Shattuck's guidance until it found a tiny dot of light. It hunted again until the dot was perfectly centered. Shattuck grunted in satisfaction and touched a switch. A maser antenna slaved itself to the telescope while the ship's computer decided where the dot of light would be when the message arrived. A coded message wound off its tape reel, while aft MacArthur's engines fused hydrogen to helium. Energy rode out through the antenna, energy modulated by the thin tape in Shattuck's cubicle, reaching toward New Scotland.
Rod was at dinner alone in his cabin when the reply arrived. A duty yeoman looked at the heading and shouted for Chief Shattuck. Four minutes later Midshipman Whitbread knocked at his captain's door.
"Yes," Rod answered irritably.
"Message from Fleet Admiral Cranston, sir."
Rod looked up in irritation. He hadn't wanted to eat alone, but the wardroom had invited Sally Fowler to dinner-it was their turn, after all-and if Blaine had invited himself to dine with his officers, Mr. Bury would have come too. Now even this miserable dinner was interrupted. "Can't it wait?"
"It's priority OC, sir."
"A hot flash for us? OC?" Blaine stood abruptly, the protein aspic forgotten. "Read it to me, Mr. Whitbread."
"Wardroom aye aye, Captain," Midshipman Staley answered.
"Yes, sir. MACARTHUR FROM IMPFLEETNEW SCOT. OC o~ 8175-"
"You may omit the authentication codes, Midshipman. I assume you checked them out."
"Yes, sir. Uh, anyway, sir, date, code . . . MESSAGE BEGINS YOU WILL PROCEED WITH ALL POSSIBLE SPEED REPEAT ALL POSSIBLE SPEED TO BRIGIT FOR REFUELING WITH PRIORITY DOUBLE A ONE STOP YOU WILL REFUEL IN MNIMUM POSSIBLE TIME STOP PARAGRAPH
"IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY ASTRONOMERS CERTAIN OBJECT IS ARTIFACT CONSTRUCTED BY INTELLIGENT BEINGS STOP FYI NO KNOWN HUMAN COLONIES AT APPARENT ORIGIN OF INTRUDER STOP PARAGRAPH - - - - -
"CRUISER LERMONTOV DISPATCHED TO ASSIST BUT CANNOT ARRIVE TO MATCH VELOCITY WITH INTRUDER UNTIL SEVENTYONE HOURS AFTER MINIMUM TIME MACARTHUR VELOCITY MATCH WITH OBJECT STOP PROCEED WITH CAUTION STOP YOU ARE TO ASSUME INTRUDER IS HOSTILE UNTIL OTHERWISE ASSURED STOP YOU ARE ORDERED TO USE CAUTION BUT DO NOT INITIATE HOSTILITIES REPEAT DO NOT INITIATE HOSTILITIES STOP
"BREAK BREAK GO GET IT CZILLER STOP WISH I WAS OUT THERE STOP GODSPEED STOP CRANSTON BREAK MESSAGE ENDS AUTHENTICATI0N-uh, that's it, sir." Whitbread was breathless.
"That's it. That's quite a lot of it, Mr. Whitbread," Blaine fingered the intercom switch. "Wardroom."
"Get me Cargill."
The First Lieutenant sounded resentful when he came on. Blaine was intruding on his dinner party. Rod felt an inner satisfaction for doing it. "Jack, get to the bridge. I want this bird moving. I'll have a minimum time course to land us on Brigit, and I mean minimum. You can run the tanks, but get us there fast."
"Aye aye, sir. Passengers aren't going to like it."
"Rape the- Uh, my compliments to the passengers, and this is a Fleet emergency. Too bad about your dinner party, Jack, but get your passengers into hydraulic beds and move this ship. I'll be on the bridge in a minute." "Yes, sir." The intercom went Silent for a moment,
then Staley's voice hooted through the ship. "NOW HEAR THIS. NOW HEAR THIS. STAND BY FOR PROLONGED ACCELERATION ABOVE TWO GRAVITIES. DEPARTMENT HEADS SIGNAL WHEN SECURED FOR INCREASED ACCELERATION."
"OK," Blaine said. He turned to Whitbread. "Punch that damned vector designation into the computer and let's see where the hell that intruder comes from." He realized he was swearing and made an effort to calm down. Intruders-aliens? Good God, what a break! To be in command of the first ship to make contact with aliens
"Let's just see where they're from, shall we?"
Whitbread moved to the input console next to Elaine's desk. The screen swam violently, then flashed numbers.
"Blast your eyes, Whitbread, I'm not a mathematician! Put it on a graph!"
"Sorry, sir." Whitbread fiddled with the input controls again. The screen became a black volume filled with blobs and lines of colored light. Big blobs were stars colored for type, velocity vectors were narrow green lines, acceleration vectors were lavender, projected paths were dimly lit red curves. The long green line- Blaine looked at the screen in disbelief, then laid his finger along the knot in his nose. "From the Mote. Well, I will be go to hell. From the Mote, in normal space." There was no known tramline to the intruder's Star. It hung in- isolation, a yellow fleck near the super giant Murcheson's Eye. Visions of octopoids danced in his head.
Suppose they were hostile? he thought suddenly. If Old Mac had to fight an alien ship, she'd need more work. Work they'd put off because it ought to be done in orbit, or dirtside, and now they'd have to do it at two plus gee.
But it was MacArthur's baby-and his. Somehow they'd do it.
5 - The Face of God
Blaine made his way quickly to the bridge and strapped himself into the command chair. As soon as he was settled he reached for the intercom unit. A startled Midshipman Whitbread looked out of the screen from the Captain's cabin.
Blaine gambled. "Read it to me, Mister."
"Uh-sir?"
"You have the regs open to the standing orders on alien contact, don't you? Read them to me, please." Blaine remembered looking them up, long ago, for fun and curiosity. Most cadets did.
"Yes, sir." Visibly, Whitbread wondered if the Captain had been reading his mind, then decided that it was the Captain's prerogative. This incident would start legends. "'Section 4500: First contact with nonhuman sentient beings. Note: Sentient beings are defined as creatures which employ tools and communication in purposeful behavior. Subnote: Officers are cautioned to use judgment in applying this definition. The hive rat of Makassar, as an example, employs tools and communication to maintain its nest, but is not Sentient.
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