Ark (Stephen Baxter) читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги

67

July 2048

They held the ballot using paper from a sacrificed social engineers’ manual on optimal breeding policies. Holle moderated the process, with observers from all the crew’s principal factions. She even got little Helen Gray and Steel Antionadi, just six and three, to help gather the ballot slips and count them, as a way of tying in the new shipborn generation to the results.

In the first round Venus came third, and was eliminated. And in the runoff Wilson beat Kelly by two-thirds to one-third. Much to Holle’s relief, nobody disputed the result.