"Sean Williams & Simon Brown - The Masque Of Agamemnon(1)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Sean)

"What good would that have done? Even back then, when intrasystem shipping
was much more active than now, there would not have been more than two or
three ships that could have reached her last known position within six
months; far too late to do anything to help her if she was in trouble.
Most likely there was some onboard disaster, or maybe the loneliness got
to her and she committed suicide."
The answer irritated Bernal. "What the hell did you wake me for, anyway?"
"I did have the telescope aligned on something I thought you'd be
interested in seeing."
"Don't whinge. What was it?"
"Fortunately, I took the precaution of storing some images over a three
day period, which was just enough time to create some very interesting
holographic-"
"If you've got something to show me, get on with it," Bernal commanded.
Several small laser beams intersected about half a metre in front of
Bernal's face. At first they formed nothing but a white shell, but a
second later a 3D-image appeared. It looked like a crown of thorns. "How
big is it?"
"Some of my sensor readings indicate the object's mass is close to seven
million tonnes."
Bernal was surprised. Without a reference point, he had assumed the object
was quite small. Then he remembered AlterEgo saying it had taken three
days to get a workable 3D image, which was a lot of time to work with for
a computer of AlterEgo's capability.
"What did you say its dimensions were?"
"I didn't, but I estimate a radius of eighty or so kilometres."
"My God! Is this one of the Achaean ships?"
"I should think that if this was just one of their ships, a fleet of them
would have been detected from Cirrus several years ago. I surmise,
therefore, that this is the fleet, its individual components joined in
some way."
Bernal peered at the holograph. "Can you make out any repetitions of
shape? Anything we could identify as a single unit?"
"Ah, I was hoping you would ask that." Bernal was sure he heard smugness
in that voice. "Indeed, this is why I woke you."
The holographic image changed, metamorphosed into something more like a
ship. Bernal peered at it. Well, vaguely more like a ship.
"It reminds me of something I've seen before, but for the life of me I
can't figure what."
"Using some deductive logic, a little dash of intuition and a thorough
search of the Cirrus Archives, I think I've discovered something,"
AlterEgo said. "Watch what happens when I remove from the Achaean ship the
youngest hull material, connective grids and certain extraneous energy
dispersion vanes."
The image altered instantaneously into something barely a tenth the size
of the original. Bernal studied the new shape for a moment before a memory
clicked in his brain.
"I don't believe it!"
AlterEgo just hummed.
"A Von Neumann probe . . ." Bernal's voice faded as he realised the