"Davies, Walter C - Interference" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davies Walter C)

the huge plug of metal that sealed the ship swung into place from the inside.
The crowd had quieted, and the annunciators roared warnings to stand back from
the breath of the fiery Titan-that soon would roar its own message. Police
cleared the mob away from the firing area with squad cars driving masses of
people before them. Hastily the reviewing stand was rolled away from the ship.
The President got into his car, a long, low open Jefferson 22. He looked a
little ill. "I hope they make it," he said, with a visible effort. "They're
plucky young--" Then he could no longer contain himself. He began to cough
violently, his hands trembling toward his mouth.
Doctors clustered around as he collapsed. Even in unconsciousness his body
twitched grotesquely and his finely modeled hands trembled as if with cold.
she's got it," said one surgeon grimly. "The President has spastitis. It's
spreading faster than we thought. And there go the dream-boys who have to get
out into space to find a cure." He gestured at the Andros, which was ponderously
aiming itself at the zenith with its own self-elevators.
With a mind-staggering crash the ship took off. The wind of its departure almost
tore clothes from the surgeons at the Presidential car. Long after it had
vanished--seemingly dead into the sun--their ears rang with the concussion, and
breezes stiffly whipped along the field.
CANTRELL grinned feebly from the bunk. "I'm all right," he said weakly. "I can
get up. This damned space-sickness gets me every time. You ready to try out the
polyphone?"
The hardy Boyle grinned back through a tangle of electronics supplies. "It's all
rigged up and-ready for you. Catch." He tossed over a set of headphones
connected with the machinery and donned a similar set of his own. "Relax," he
warned. "If we're not far enough out this ought to be a full-blooded shock to
mind and body." He switched on a dull glowing tube.
Cantrell squinted his eyes shut and concentrated on the familiar thought
patterns of his partner. He caught them for a moment. Boyle was thinking of the
blackness of space through which they were speeding and wondering vaguely
whether the meteor interceptor would work as well under stress as it had in the
tests. He held up a hand with thumb and forefinger meeting, both crooked, in the
time-honored technicians' gesture of: coming over 100%.
Then there was a sudden rip in the smoothly unreeling pattern. It was as though
a panorama were being opened before his eyes; the panorama of his partner's
mind. Then a seam opened suddenly and without warning. He was reading the minds
of total strangers, people he'd never heard of.
In rapid sequence he caught the image of a grubby little room as seen by a short
man, and then surges of physical disgust at the sight--through this short
stranger's eyes--of a big, muscular woman. Following that image and impression
was a vision of staring dead into the sun, some fool who was looking for their
ship, no doubt. Back to the grubby room, but this time seen from the slightly
higher elevation of the muscular woman, who obviously didn't like the little man
she focused on any more than he liked her.
For a full hour Cantrell tried to claw his way back to the mind stream of the
man who was raptly sitting a few feet from him, but the obtrusive thoughts of
people back on earth insisted on popping up. For a full hour Cantrell plumbed
the depths of degradation in some minds, read the noble and exalted thoughts of
others. He tuned in on one murder and two suicides, seen in dizzy angles by the
different participants in the violence done.