"George Zebrowski - The Star Web" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zebrowski George)

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The Star Web by George Zebrowski
Chapter One
A Voice From The Cold
Something had come to life beneath the Antarctic ice, something that was bleeding patterned but
unrecognizable radio signals, pulsing strongly enough to be reported by the earthwatch station in polar
orbit, whispering from the edge of the world, from a place where there should have been only silence.

Standing on the white surface under a clear blue sky, Juan Obrion imagined a presence buried deeply
beneath his heavy boots. Around him the packed ice and snow filled the Antarctic valley like ice cream in
a rocky bowl, leaving only the mountainous rim to sight.

What was it? How deep, he wondered. A few hundred feet, a mile? The mountains were almost three
miles high. How large a device was it? It did not seem to be a natural phenomena. What was its power
source? How long had it been here, and what had moved it to speak?

He turned and walked back to the snowcab where the rest of the investigation team was unpacking the
electronic gear that would help pinpoint the source of the strange signals.

The group included Lena Dravic, a Soviet-Norwegian paleontologist, Magnus Rassmussen, UN
electronic inspections expert, Malachi Moede from Kenya, mechanic, tractor operator, amateur
astron-omer-jack-of-all-trades and military mercenary who had given up UN trouble shooting to help in
the adventure of developing earth's own alien environment, Antarctica. Juan Obrion was an exobiologist
who had turned polar expeditions director.

A week ago Titus Summet, coordinator of UN Earth Resources Security, had ordered them to search
out this thing regardless of delay to other work. Juan knew that the others were as impatient as he to get
to the end of the matter and return to their own projects before the Antarctic summer came to an end. He
could feel their resentment at having to be here; it was the same as his own.

Yet there was something strange about this place, something inevitable in the presence of such a
mysterious phenomena in the icebound Antarctic valley. For a moment it amused him to watch the way
his mind conjured up uncritical suspicions independently of his approval. A scrap of information, an
irrational image, even a fond wish that something could be trueтАФall this went into the mix that supported
the emergence of a variety of judgements and conclusions. And if a sudden fact appeared to support any
kind of structure, simple or elaborate, it would have the effect of a spark in a volatile mixture; he would
rush toward the implications.

The entire situation here was beginning to look like his kind of problem, and he found himself enjoying it.
He valued the intellectual and emotional perception of the unknown, knowing that together with the
catalyst of curiosity the process released the play of human creativity. Mind and knowledge are finite,
while what can be known seems endless, and what can be imagined is endless. The intensity of
enjoyment made life worth living, he thought, while the unknown holds us in suspense between suspicion