"Steve White - The Disinherited" - читать интересную книгу автора (White Steve)

watch on the distant inner system of Tareil.




***


Again it was night. And I had so looked forward to seeing once
again a living worldтАЩs daylight, Varien thought, pulling his cloak
tightly around his old body against the chill But this was the night
of a different world. And it was a different sort of night, here on the
third planet of Lirauvas primary stellar component. The planets sun
тАФa yellow-white star somewhat more massive and luminous than
TareilтАФhad set, but the secondary star of this binary system was in
the sky, currently almost halfway out on its long elliptical orbit but
still a bright orange flare that illuminated the coastal plain below the
bluffs on which this base was built and dimmed all but the brightest
stars in the skyтАФsuch as Landaen, at which he now gazed.
Not really a very luminous star, he knewтАФslightly less so than this
planets primary, in fact. But it was so close that light could travel
the distance in just under six of RaehanтАЩs years. And it was the goal
that had brought him here tonight, and that previously had lent

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White, Steve - [The Disinherited 01] - The Disinherited


urgency to his quest for a means of outpacing light where no
displacement points existed. For his earliest outpost here at Lirauva,
scanning the nearby stars, had detected the extravagant outpouring
of patterned radio waves that could only represent the signature of a
fairly advanced civilization, so tantalizingly just beyond this final
terminus of the Lirauva Chain.
A patch of blackness flanked by running lights suddenly occluded a
few stars, growing rapidly as AelanniтАЩs drop shuttle fell groundward
until it reached a sufficiently low altitude for its atmospheric drive
to take hold. It then swooped around in a landing pattern that
avoided areas of the base where electronic equipment might have
been disrupted by the annoying side effects of grav repulsion. Must
do something about that, Varien entered in his mental filing system
as the shuttle settled onto the landing platform, its hatch wheezed
open, and, for the first time in over two years, he saw his daughter.
Varien, and Varien alone, had never really seen her beauty. Features
that were merely sharp in himself and Tarlann were, in Aelanni,
chiseled by a sculptor of genius. Such a sculptor would have been
inspired by the body her form-fitting light duty vac suit revealed,
moving with unself-conscious grace as she descended the shuttles
ramp in a gravity eight percent less than RaehanтАЩs. Her long, thick
dark hair held a fascinating reddish glint now brought out by