"Isaac Asimov - Fantastic Vo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

"Given your investigations into my life, I am sure you know that my ideas are not accepted, but how can you possibly be sure that I am all that depressed over it?"

"Any sane man would be depressed. And one has only to talk to you to be certain."

"Do you accept my ideas?"

"I? I am not in your field. I know nothing -- or very little -- about the nervous system."

"I suppose you simply accept Shapirov's estimate of my ideas."

"Yes. And even if I did not -- desperate problems may require desperate remedies. What harm, then, if we try your ideas as a remedy? It will certainly leave us no worse off."

"So you have my ideas. They have been published."

She gazed at him steadily. "Somehow we don't think all your ideas have been published. That is why we want you."

Morrison laughed without humor. "What good can I possibly do you in connection with miniaturization? I know less about miniaturization than you do about the brain. Far less."

"Do you know anything at all about miniaturization?"

"Only two things. That the Soviets are known to be investigating it -- and that it is impossible."

Boranova stared thoughtfully at the river. "Impossible? What if I told you we had accomplished the task?"

"I would as soon believe you if you told me polar bears fly."

"Why should I lie to you?"

"I point out the fact. I'm not concerned about the motivation."

"Why are you so certain miniaturization is impossible?"

"If you reduce a man to the dimensions of a fly, then all the mass of a man would be crowded into the volume of a fly. You'd end up with a density of something like --" he paused to think -- "a hundred and fifty thousand times that of platinum."

"But what if the mass were reduced in proportion?"

"Then you end up with one atom in the miniaturized man for every three million in the original. The miniaturized man would not only have the size of a fly but the brainpower of a fly as well."

"And if the atoms are reduced, too?"

"If it is miniaturized atoms you are speaking of, then Planck's constant, which is an absolutely fundamental quantity in our Universe, forbids it. Miniaturized atoms would be too small to fit into the graininess of the Universe."

"And if I told you that Planck's constant was reduced as well, so that a miniaturized man would be encased in a field in which the graininess of the Universe was incredibly finer than it is under normal conditions?"

"Then I wouldn't believe you."

"Without examining the matter? You would refuse to believe it as a result of preconceived convictions, as your colleagues refuse to believe you?"

And at this, Morrison was, for a moment, silent.