"Niven, Larry - The Missing Mass" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

The jellyfish in his aquarium was still there. I wondered if heТd been abandoned. Five Chirpsithra who had watched their alien companions all go away, now gathered around the big table with the aquarium in the center. Herman glanced my way for permission. I thumbs-upped him. He pulled up a high chair and joined them. Something hairy came out of the restroom, looked around at the empty bar, then joined Herman and the chirps and jellyfish.
Jehaneh looked tired. I told her to go sack out. Gail went too. Roger Teng-Hui was still at the bar working his Toshiba. The Terminator Beaver was deeply involved with his Macintosh.
I stopped at the BeaverТs table.
What showed of him was largely prosthetic. Under all the goo and wire and silver plating and small glowing icons the Terminator Beaver might have been a solitary Low Jumbo. He was half covered in tiny black platelets, half pink hide bared for prosthetics. Circuitry, lenses, armor covered his body. The material shone like glass and metal and jelly, but it all flexed. There was a narrow indicator strip above his small, neat carnivoreТs mouth, where he could read it with goggles like two silver eggs. The widgetry had a functional beauty implying, I thought, centuries of design. It hid most of his face.
Wires ran from a neck ring into the ports of the Macintosh. The screen was dancing, flickering, and his fingers never went near it.
HeТd told us his name: a near-supersonic birdsong. He had been in the Draco Tavern since the landings, eating and drinking alone. He had bought the Macintosh laptop computer in Forelgrad, the merchant town that has grown up around the spaceport. Gail had shown him the basics during a dull evening. HeТd become skilled very rapidly.
WeТd speculated. The Draco TavernТs elaborate restroom isnТt gender-specific, so we still didnТt know that. Was he, she, it a cyborg by choice, a medical patient, geriatric case, augmented athlete? Was he an injured Low Jumbo avoiding eyes that might find him ugly?
HeТd plugged his Mac into the wall, not into one of the universal sockets the Chirpsithra gave us, but into a telephone jack. I looked back toward the bar. Teng-Hui was around the other side, not visible.
The Beaver might well be the mysterious . Did I want Teng-Hui to know that? Did I want to tell the Beaver about Teng-Hui?
I try not to get myself or the Tavern involved in these dominance games. Sometimes thereТs no helping it. And sometimes I can supplement our income by learning something valuable. I once went broke building a supercomputer, but thatТs also how I patented the magnetic float.
The game the Beaver was playing wasnТt an action game, so I felt free to interrupt. УTerminator Beaver,Ф I said, and let my translator whistle his name, УHow are you doing?Ф
Let him take it either way: progress on the game, or was he thirsty?
He whistle-sang. His translator said, УDead. Notice joke. I begin the game dead.Ф
УYour character can still get hurt.Ф He was playing Grim Fandango upgraded for 3D. I watched him trying to deal with the coroner and his flower beds. УDo you enjoy hints?Ф
УNo.Ф
УI need a hint to a puzzle. How good are you with that thing?Ф
УA fascinating toy.Ф
УHave you had dealings with this entity?Ф I showed him the net address: .
He asked, УDo you have access to this entity?Ф He typed it on the screen:
УIt may be. Describe what you want of him.Ф
УA matter of negotiations. Rick Schumann, why should I tell you more?Ф
У СChinaRogerТ hasnТt dealt with aliens.Ф
УYou have had much experience. I have funds if you will act as a mediator,Ф said the Terminator Beaver.
УIТve done that,Ф I acknowledged. УHow difficult is my task to be? Try to describe what you want of СChinaRogerТ.Ф
УI seek knowledge that would point to energy for industrial purposes.Ф

Guessing, I asked, УSomething to do with the missing mass?Ф
УI wondered if you merely pretended to knowledge. Would you accept one-over-twelve-cubed of net profits from this process over the next thousand years?Ф
I negotiated for half that, plus a modest thousand credits to be transferred at once. A bird in the hand, etc. The recording would serve as a contract if I brought these two together. I hadnТt decided on that. Either way, I expected no profit from this.
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Herman was getting recharged sparkers for his table. The Wheesthroo, the hairy guy, wanted an orange sherbet shake in odd proportions. I made that and Herman took it away.
Teng had waited patiently. I asked him, УWhat do you want with this Helmuthdip?Ф
УI want to know what he wants with me.Ф
УWhatТs he say he wants?Ф
УThatТs complicated.Ф
УIТm not busy.Ф
УI thought he was just another astrophysicist. But, look, IТm Roger Teng-Hui. Any decent astrophysicist knows who I am, and IТd know who he was. I donТt mind СHelmuthdipТ hiding his name. But he knows of research IТve never heard of, and there are terms he didnТt know. That was funny. He wanted to talk about the expanding universe, but he didnТt know СHubble constantТ. He knew Сmissing massТ, but he didnТt know СCasimir effect.ТФ
УI donТt either.Ф
УAh. Look, this is fascinating stuffЧФ He caught himself. УEven now. Rick, the current most interesting question in astrophysics is, what is the nature of the expansion of the universe? Will the universe expand to infinity, or will it collapse back to a point? Most astrophysicists would like to find just enough matter to make space flat.
УUnderstand this picture? If the universe is too massive, itТll expand for awhile and then fall back into a reverse Big Bang. If thereТs not enough mass, itТll be expanding toward infinite volume. Right between, it expands to a finite limit. ThatТs flat space, right between infinite expansion and an eventual collapse, and it fits a cluster of theories built around an inflationary universe. How fast weТre expanding is the Hubble constant.Ф
I did in fact understand him, but he didnТt wait to find that out, he just raced on. УNow, the right amount of matter to do that depends on how fast the galaxies are going away from each other... the Hubble constant, right? The faster theyТre flying apart, the more energetic the Big Bang explosion must have been, and the more mass it will take to pull everything to a stop.
УThe point is, none of the astronomers can find enough mass to do the job. Maybe we would have. Telescopes were getting better all the time, but then the Chirpsithra showed upЧФ
УIs this what was going on at СHelmuthdipТsТ website?Ф
УYes. I thought he was an amateur at first. Brilliant amateur. I was intrigued.
УThe latest, most accurate measurement of the Hubble constant depends on Type 1A supernova explosions. Do you know how that works?Ф I shook my head. УSay youТve got a bloated gas giant star losing mass to a white dwarf companion. The hot hydrogen gas rains down through an amazing gravity field, so itТs heated to tens of millions of degrees. When it gets dense enough, you get a fusion bomb, boom.
УThese Type 1AТs all resemble each other, and they can be recognized across huge distances. The universe is full of them. A Type 1A supernova tells you how far away it is by how bright it is, and how fast itТs moving by its red shift.
УUsing those as meters to measure the universe, we get a rate of expansion that suggests around thirty percent of the mass thatТs needed to close the universe, or ten percent, or seventy percent, depending on who needs a grant.Ф
УSo you look for more mass.Ф
УRight! We look in places obscure and weird. We postulate mass we canТt see, dark matter, in all sizes from neutrinos to intergalactic dust, to near infinities of brown dwarf stars, to hypothetical massive particles left over from the Big Bang itself. I wasnТt a front runner in all this, but I kept track. And I got old, and we had too many solutions and none of them made a lot of sense. Aliens came down in Siberia, hordes of them, and they know. So what was the point?
УThen СHelmuthdipТ popped up on my screen. And for awhile he was making sense, and then he got into the Casimir effect.Ф
УWhat brought you here?Ф

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