"Timothy Zahn - Spinneret" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

"Has it occurred to youтАФto any of you," Allerton added, glancing around the
table, "that this whole thing might be some sort of test? That our willingness to
take on what seems to be a hopeless task may be how all those aliens out there
judge our spirit and ingenuity?"

"More likely testing our intelligence," Nagata murmured.

"I have an idea," Liadov spoke up. "As Mr. Allerton seems to be the only one of
us interested in demonstrating mankind's resolve to our new neighborsтАФand as he
is so fond of invoking Yankee ingenuity as the solution to all our problemsтАФI
suggest we give the United States a UN mandate to develop and administer this
world. With a certain amount of UN support, of course."

***

"All right," Allerton said abruptly. "If I can get Congress to approve, we'll do it.
And"тАФhe leveled a finger at LiadovтАФ "we'll do it well."

The next day the matter was brought before the General Assembly, which
endorsed the mandate by a 148 to 13 vote. A month later the U.S. Senate followed
suit, and the world newly christened Astra became the center of perhaps the
biggest project the Army Corps of Engineers had ever undertaken.

Eleven months after that, the first colonists arrived.

Chapter 1
From orbit Astra resembled nothing so much as a giant mudball on which
someone had thoughtlessly spilled a bucket or two of pale blue paint. Both of the
continental land masses were as dead-dull-bland as anything Colonel Lloyd
Meredith had ever seen. No reds, certainly no greens; just the occasional blue of a
lake or a line of white-capped mountains. Even the continental-shelf mineral
deposits upon which the planet's future industry depended so heavily came out as

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Zahn, Timothy - Spinneret


a blue-washed white. "I wish we'd brought some paint," he commented to the man
beside him.

Captain Radford snorted mildly. "You'll get used to it," he said. "I think you'll find
you've got bigger problems down there than lack of decent scenery."

"No doubt," Meredith conceded. Radford had been ferrying workers and
equipment back and forth for nearly a year now and undoubtedly knew more
about the place than Meredith, who'd spent that same period up to his zygomatic
arch in organizational details for the permanent colony. "Are we anywhere near
the settlement? My map-reading courses never included looking at the terrain
from this height."