"Anderson, Poul - 1964 Nicholas Van Rijn 02 - Trader to the Stars 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

ine article is chasing us. No luck, of course. All the ani-
mals did give us an interested regard except the gorilloids
. . . which mayor may not prove anything.
"What animals, now? I've been so blinking busy-
"Well, we call 'em the tiger apes, the tentacle centaurs,
the elephantoid, the helmet beasts, and the caterpiggtes.
That's stretching things, I know; the tiger apes and the
helmet beasts are highly improbable, to say the least,
and the elephantoid isn't much more convincing. The
gorilloids have the right size and the most efficient-look-
ing hands, and they're oxygen breathers as I said, so we
may as well take them first. Next in order of likelihood, I'd
guess, are the caterpiggles and the tentacle centaurs. But
the caterpiggles, though oxyg~n breathers, are from a
high-gravity planet; their air pressure would give us nar-
cosis in no time. The tentacle centaurs breathe hydrogen.
In either case, we'd have to work in space aTnlor ."
"The gorilloids will be quite bad enough, thank you
kindly!"
Torrance looked at the workbench. "What exactly do
you plan to do?" he asked. "I've been too busy with my
own end of this affair to learn any details of yours."
"I've adapted- some things from the medical kit,"
said Yamamura. "A sort of ophthalmoscope, for example;
because the ship's instruments use color codes and finely
printed symbols, so that the Eksers are bound to have
eyes at least as good as ours. Then this here's "a nervous-
impulse tracer. It detects synaptic flows and casts a three-
dimensional image into yonder crystal box, so we can see
the whole nervous system functioning as a set of lumi-
nous traces. By correlating this with gross anatomy, we can
roughly identify the sympathetic and parasympathetic
systems-or their equivalents-I hope. And the brain.
And, what's really to the point, the degree of brain activity
more or less independent of the other nerve paths.. That
is, whether the, animal is thinking."
He shrugged. "It tests out fine on me. Whether it'll work
on a nonhuman, especiaIly- in a different sort of atmos-
phere, I do not know. I'm sure it'll develop bugs."
" 'We can but try,'" quoted Torrance wearily.
"I suppose Old Nick is sitting and thinking," said Yama-
mura in an edged voice. "1 haven't seen him for quite
some time."
"He's not been helping Jeri and me either," said Tor-
rance. "Told us our atte~pt to communicate was futile
until we could prove to the Eksers that we knew who
they were. And even after that, he said, the only communi-
cation at first will be by gestures made with a pistol."
"He's probably right."
"He's not right! Logically, perhaps, but not psychologi-