In the 1980s, physicists at a lab in the Soviet Union find traces of strange data in the cosmic background radiation. Because powerful forces in the military believe these findings can be turned into a weapon for use in the cold war, the information gleaned by the physicists is kept under strictest secrecy.
The scientists are limited to primitive 1980s’ technology, but what they find has roots in much, much older times. They finally try an experiment that they hope will win the world over for communism.
But will they be able to maintain control over an enormous power that has its own, dangerous plans?
Genre: FICTION / Science Fiction / High TechGreat sales :-)
Goodbye, Earth. The probe had reached its top speed. Russia lay 380 kilometers below, where the probe had left the factory of the NPO Lavochkin Aerospace Company more than a year ago. But ‘Prognoz 9’, as it was officially called, wasn’t looking down. Its gaze was directed continuously toward the sun. At the same time, its two-meter-wide, one-meter-long cylindrical body rotated on its axis approximately every two minutes.
This was practical, because it meant the sunlight always reached the four solar panels, stretched out from its sides like the leaflets of a four-leaf clover, at the optimum angle. But even more critical was the measuring instrument that Prognoz 9 carried on the underside of its barrel-shaped body, which was always facing away from the sun. ‘Relikt-1’ consisted of two horn-shaped antennae, which measured the intensity of a particular wavelength of the microwave radiation propagating in space. The Earth—which Prognoz 9 had left five months ago on the tip of a Molniya-M rocket—was in the way. That was why the probe was distancing itself as much as possible on a starkly elliptical orbit, up to a distance of 720,000 kilometers, more than twice as far as the moon that had been the Earth’s companion for billions of years.
It was lonely all the way out there, but that was where Prognoz 9 had to spend the majority of its time. The deeper it penetrated into the blackness of the universe the more it slowed, and the more precise the measurements of the Relikt-1 instrument became. It tirelessly collected photons from the cosmic background radiation, charting the entire celestial sphere. Every four days the probe sent the collected data back to Earth, where the Space Research Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences was waiting to receive it.
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German
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Already translated.
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Spanish
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Already translated.
Translated by Nicolay Giraldo
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Author review: Great work, thanks a lot! |
