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| 3001 The final Odissey |
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Страница 3 из 91 temperatures not far above absolute zero. Thawing them out could produce unpleasant surprises: as one astrochemist had famously remarked, `Comets have bad breath`. `Skipper to all personnel,` Chandler announced. `There`s been a slight change of programme. We`ve been asked to delay operations, to investigate a target that Spaceguard radar has picked up.` `Any details?` somebody asked, when the chorus of groans over the ship`s intercom had died away. `Not many, but I gather it`s another Millennium Committee project they`ve forgotten to cancel.` More groans: everyone had become heartily sick of all the events planned to celebrate the end of the 2000s. There had been a general sigh of relief when 1 January 3001 had passed uneventfully, and the human race could resume its normal activities. `Anyway, it will probably be another false alarm, like the last one. We`ll get back to work just as quickly as we can. Skipper out.` This was the third wild-goose-chase, Chandler thought morosely, he`d been involved with during his career. Despite centuries of exploration, the Solar System could still produce surprises, and presumably Spaceguard had a good reason for its request. He only hoped that some imaginative idiot hadn`t once again sighted the fabled Golden Asteroid. If it did exist -- which Chandler did not for a moment believe -- it would be no more than a mineralogical curiosity: it would be of far less real value than the ice he was nudging sunwards, to bring life to barren worlds. There was one possibility, however, which he did take quite seriously. Already, the human race had scattered its robot probes through a volume of space a hundred light-years across -- and the Tycho Monolith was sufficient reminder that much older civilizations had engaged in similar activities. There might well be other alien artefacts in the Solar System, or in transit through it. Captain Chandler suspected that Spaceguard had something like this in mind: otherwise it would hardly have diverted a Class I space-tug to go chasing after an unidentified radar blip. Five hours later, the questing Goliath detected the echo at extreme range; even allowing for the distance, it seemed disappointingly small. However, as it grew clearer and stronger, it began to give the signature of a metallic object, perhaps a couple of metres long. It was travelling on an orbit heading out of the Solar System, so was almost certainly, Chandler decided, one of the myriad pieces of space-junk that Mankind had tossed towards the stars during the last millennium and which might one day provide the only evidence that the human race had ever existed. Then it came close enough for visual inspection, and Captain Chandler realized, with awed astonishment, that some patient historian was still checking the earliest records of the Space Age. What a pity that the computers had given him the answer, just a few years too late for the Mifiermium celebrations! `Goliath here,` Chandler radioed Earthwards, his voice tinged with pride as well as solemnity. `We`re bringing aboard a thousand-year-old astronaut. And I can guess who it is.` 2 Awakening Frank Poole awoke, but he did not remember. He was not even sure of his name. Obviously, he was in a hospital room: even though his eyes were still closed, the most primitive, and evocative, of his senses told him that. Each breath brought the faint and not unpleasant tang of antiseptics in the air, and it triggered a memory of the time when -- of course! -- as a reckless teenager he had broken a rib in the Arizona Hang-gliding Championship. Now it was all beginning to come back. I`m Deputy Commander Frank Poole, Executive Officer, USSS Discovery, on a Top Secret mission to Jupiter -- It seemed as if an icy hand had gripped his heart. He remembered, in |
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