"Steve White - The Prometheus Project" - читать интересную книгу автора (White Steve)

technological progression had followed its normal course, we'd now be living in the future visualized by
those Golden Age science-fiction writers: massive computers with lots of flashing lights and buzzers,
and clunky Robbie-the-Robot type cybernetic devices, all using advanced vacuum tubes.
"At the same time, an analogous process was going on in molecular genetics. The same goes for any
number of other fields. Materials technology, for example; none of those writers foresaw Kevlar. Nor
did they foresee the laser. 'Death rays' were just a lucky guess."
Langston struggled to comprehend. "But . . . but who has been releasing these innovations? Who decides
when they're to be revealed? And . . . what was that you said earlier about deceiving these aliens into
thinking Earth had some kind of world government?"
"The answer to all your questions is the same. You see, this had to be kept secret. If it had gotten out, the
result would have been global panic and hysteria that would have blown the whole deception. So a
secret agency known as the Prometheus Project, answerable only to the President, was formed for the
purposes of interfacing with the aliens and conducting a double security operation: keeping the truth
about Earth from the aliens, and keeping the truth about the aliens' existenceтАФand our relationship with
them, including the agency's own existenceтАФfrom the human race. It also controls the dissemination of
extraterrestrial technology.
"It's been a staggering jobтАФall the more so because the overriding imperative of secrecy has made the
personnel problem almost intractable. Nevertheless, recruiting for the Prometheus Project commenced
immediately and proceeded on a continuing basis . . ."
Back | Next
Contents
Framed




file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/White,%20steve%20-%20The%20prometheus%20project/0743498917___0.htm (8 of 8)28-12-2006 15:57:06
- Chapter 1

Back | Next
Contents




file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/White,%20steve%20-%20The%20prometheus%20project/0743498917___1.htm (1 of 7)28-12-2006 15:57:10
 - Chapter 1




PART ONE:
1963
CHAPTER ONE
I still remember my first glimpse of Mr. Inconnu. It's easy to remember, because it was also my last one.
It was while I was in training. I was hastening between Quonset huts, to the mess hall. It was raining. It's
always raining in the Alaska panhandle, except in the winter when it's snowing. And this was spring,
shortly after the Good Friday earthquake of 1964. We hadn't gotten the direct impact, for the epicenter
was five hundred miles to the northwest, at the northern end of Prince William Sound. But the tsunamis
had swept to the far reaches of the Pacific, with twenty-foot waves as far as California. We had been