"Asimov, Isaac - Feeling of Power" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

mention. Stillwe may have made a breakthrough on the
square root front."
"Square roots?"
"It involves some tricky points and we haven't licked the
bugs yet, but Technician Aub, the man who invented the
science and who has an amazing intuition in connection
with it, maintains he has the problem almost solved. And he
is only a Technician. A man like yourself, a trained and tal-
ented mathematician, ought to have no difficulty."
"Square roots," muttered Loesser, attracted.
"Cube roots, too. Are you with us?"
Loesser's hand thrust out suddenly. "Count me in."
General Weider stumped his way back and forth at the
head of the room and addressed his listeners after the fashion
of a savage teacher facing a group of recalcitrant students. It
made no difference to the general that they were the civilian
scientists heading Project Number. The general was the over-
all head, and he so considered himself at every waking mo-
ment.
He said, "Now square roots are all fine. I can't do them
myself and I don't understand the methods, but they're fine.
Still, the Project will not be sidetracked into what some
of you call the fundamentals. You can play with graphitics
any way you want to after the war is over, but right now we
have specific and very practical problems to solve."
In a far corner. Technician Aub listened with painful at-
tention. He was no longer a Technician, of course, having
been relieved of his duties and assigned to the project, with
a fine-sounding title and good pay. But, of course, the social
distinction remained and the highly placed scientific leaders
could never bring themselves to admit him to their ranks
on a footing of equality. Nor, to do Aub justice, did he,
himself, wish it. He was as uncomfortable with them as they
with him.
The general was saying, "Our goal is a simple one, gentle-
men: the replacement of the computer. A ship that can
navigate space without a computer on board can be con-
structed in one fifth the time and at one tenth the expense
of a computer-laden ship. We could build fleets five times,
ten times, as great as Deneb could if we could but eliminate
the computer.
"And I see something even beyond this. It may be fantastic
now, a mere dream; but in the future I see the manned
missile!"
There was an instant murmur from the audience.
The general drove on. "At the present time, our chief bot-
tleneck is the fact that missiles are limited in intelligence.
The computer controlling them can only be so large, and for
that reason they can meet the changing nature of anti-
missile defences in an unsatisfactory way. Few missiles, if