Earth Empire (novel)

Malcolm Mackenzie, a space engineer, created a company to produce hydrogen on Titan and transport it to orbital gas stations. Titanium is the only cosmic body in the solar system with sufficient hydrogen reserves and low gravity. Success brings Malcolm to the post of head of the Titan government. Due to the genetic mutation, Malcolm’s children are not viable, so he flies to Earth at the age of 30, where his son, the clone Colin, is created in the genetic clinic. Colin is an exact copy of his father, so in order to create his clone son Duncan, he also flew to Earth at the age of 30. The age of 30 years is the limit for them, they spent their whole lives at low gravity, after which they can no longer return to Earth. All three of Mackenzie are very similar to each other, understand each other perfectly, they work in the government of Titan and are the most powerful family of the Titan.

Duncan was friends with a talented but impulsive youth Carl, a representative of another influential Titan family. When a cruise ship with students from Earth made a stop on Titan, they both fell in love with a Kalindi girl.

Duncan was 30 years old, and when Mackenzie was invited to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the United States, the family decided to take a chance and delegated it to Earth so that he would acquire an heir and solve Titan’s economic problems associated with a decrease in hydrogen purchases due to the use of new rocket engines .

Before leaving, Duncan observes a “wax worm” - an eruption of the lava of a titanic volcano and visits his grandmother, who gives him pentamino from titanite - a rare mineral from Titan, which contains only a few pieces.

During a flight to Earth, Duncan gets acquainted with the principle of operation of a new gravitational engine, which does not require a lot of fuel. The captain of the ship tells him that now human civilization resembles the ancient British Empire: with a metropolis on Earth and remote colonies in space, which are connected by long-term spacecraft travels and even communications took several hours to cover this distance.

On Earth, Duncan sees that the former technological problems were solved by the earthlings by legislative restriction of the population and deurbanization. Housing estates and production cleaned underground. Society coexists in harmony with nature, takes care of old things. The style of the first half of the 20th century and earlier is in fashion. There is a global information network with search and triple duplication of information. And on all roads only automatic control is allowed.

Antiquarian Mandelstam turns to Duncan to find out the origin of the piece of titanite offered to him. Since no new finds have been recorded by the Titan government, Duncan suspects of smuggling Carl, who in recent years has carried out expeditions on Saturn’s distant satellites. He advises an antiquarian to track Kalindi, Carl’s possible contact on Earth.

Kalindi is now vice president of the company, which for its events raised and restored the Titanic.

Karl is found near Tehran, where the antennas of a radio telescope are located for deep space exploration. Duncan and Carl meet at the top of one of the antennas, and in an accident, Carl dies.

After Karl’s death, Duncan receives a password for his handheld computer and realizes that he smuggled funds for the Argus project - an enlarged copy of the existing radio telescope, which was planned to be placed on the remote satellite of Saturn, where the influence of the solar wind will not interfere with studies in the long wavelength range . The aim of the project was to search for extraterrestrial life in a cloud of ionized gas at a distance of one tenth of a light year.

Duncan brings his son to Titan - a clone not of himself, but of the deceased Karl.

The book is the first science fiction work featuring a spaceship using a black hole as an energy source ^[1] .

• Earth Empire on the site " Fantasy Laboratory "