The Jupiter Theft

Начало книги

The Swan was rising.

Deneb popped up on schedule, a bright spark above the crater rim. The giant X-ray telescope anchored in the dust of the Korolev Basin revolved in its heavy turret to take an optical bearing on it. The telescope’s rudimentary brain made a minor adjustment in alignment, plugged itself into the Farside computer’s cesium clock, and waited patiently for the object it had been told to track.

A sizzle of X-rays bounced off the nest of paraboloid reflectors and hit the scanning focus. The telescope became mildly attentive. It was several seconds too early for the appearance of Cygnus X-1.

Then Cygnus X-1 itself rose above the bleak lunar horizon, right where it was supposed to be. Something was very wrong.

The telescope called for help. It took the Farside computer about twelve nanoseconds to check all the possibilities against the star charts stored in its memory. None of them fit. It took another fraction of a second to rule out instrumentation errors. Then the computer followed its standing instructions and alerted the people.

Читать дальше →