"Allen Steele - Coyote 01 - Coyote" - читать интересную книгу автора (Steele Allen)

out that a couple of the superjovians in the catalog were really brown dwarfs, feeble remnants of what
might have been binary companions to their primaries. Interesting in their own way, but not what the JPL
planet hunters wished to find. Over the course of the next few years, though, they managed to confirm
through direct imaging the existence of several Earth-size planets in systems where superjovians had
previously been detected. However, none of these planets lay within habitable zones; they either orbited
too close or too far away from their suns for life to have been able to evolve upon them.

Yet when the JPL team focused the TPF-on 47 Ursae Majoris B, they discovered six major satellites,
ranging in approximate size from that of lo all the way to one whose mass was almost identical to that of
Mars. Six moons in stately circular orbits around a gas giant beyond the edge of what had previously
been established as a habitable zoneтАж but what did that mean, exactly? At one time, the depths of
EarthтАЩs oceans beyond the continental shelves were believed to be lifeless and near-sterile, until volcanic
black smokers were discovered and, teeming around them, dozens of different kinds of plants and
animals, all well adapted to crushing pressure and complete lack of sunlight. Conditions on some of 47
Uma BтАЩs satellites couldnтАЩt be anywhere near as extreme as that; something might have found a way to
evolve on one of them, despite previous estimates of habitability.

By the late twenties, NASAтАЩs political clout was nearly exhausted. Private enterprise had taken the lionтАЩs
share of manned space operations, and the success of commercial lunar mining operations had prompted
widespread discussion within Congress that NASA should be dismantled, its operations folded into a
new Federal Space Agency. Yet public interest in 47 Uma B and its satellites was sufficiently high to
allow NASAтАЩs administrators to go to the Hill with two new-start programs: the Infrared Spectrum
Telescope, which would be able to analyze absorption bands from 47 Uma BтАЩs moons and determine if
any of them held telltale signatures of atmospheric carbon dioxide, ozone, or water vapor, and Project
Starflight, a long-term program to investigate the construction of an interstellar probe. The first reliable
nuclear-fusion tokamak had been put into operation in France six months earlier, and the United States
was actively engaged in its own fusion program; a starship utilizing a fusion engine now seemed feasible.

NASAтАЩs request might have been dismissed had it not been for timely intervention from an unlikely ally:
Hamilton Conroy, a first-term congressman from Alabama who was one of the ideological leaders of the
new Liberty Party. Although only in his early thirties, Conroy was already making a name for himself on
the Hill; at the top of his agenda was the formation of a National Reform Program, which among other
things called for a Third Constitutional Congress that would substantially revise the U.S. Constitution,
including the Bill of Rights. Yet ConroyтАЩs vision extended beyond reactionary politics; captivated by the
hazy images of 47 Uma BтАЩs moons captured by the TPF and arguing that America had a manifest destiny
in space, he managed to persuade his colleagues in the House to fund both projects. For their part,
NASA administrators quietly decided to hold their noses and accept Representative ConroyтАЩs political
assistance. If it took the support of a right-wing ideologue to keep their hopes alive, they rationalized,
then so be it; they only prayed that it wouldnтАЩt be a Faustian bargain.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, a friendly competition was quietly being held by JPL
scientists. The six major satellites orbiting the superjovian had been officially cataloged as 47 Uma Bl, 47
Uma B2, and so forth, but someone suggested that these moons and their primary should be given
proper names.

So an informal contest was held, open only to CalTech researchers, to be judged by senior
administrators. Suggestions were emailed back and forth, posted on bulletin boards, chatted about over
lunch tables; they included everything from the names of the original seven Mercury astronauts to
astrological signs to favorite Disney characters, but in the end the judges ruled in favor of animal-demigod
names drawn from Native American mythology. Thus 47 Ursae Majoris B was called Bear, and in